It Started With A Prayer And A Burden

As we have prayed and asked God in recent months “Lord, what would you have the Salazar family give our lives to?” the Lord rekindled (for the third time in our 14 years of marriage) the desire to plant a church.

We wanted to give our lives to seeing four groups of people we have been burdened for come to know Christ and become a faithful part of his church:

• Unbelievers—People who have never heard or do not believe the gospel.
• Dechurched—People who used to go to church and left.
• Unchurched—People claiming to believe, but do not go to church.
• Under-churched—People in churches that no longer preach the gospel.

Why Church Planting?

The most strategic and effective way to change someone’s eternal destiny is by:

• Planting a church in close proximity to where non-Christians live, work, and play.
• Building relationships with, extending love to, and sharing the astonishing good news of the gospel of Jesus with everyone, but especially non-Christians, in that community.
• Cultivating a mission culture within the new church plant that empowers every member of that new church to give themselves to sharing Christ with non-Christians.

A Spiritual 360-Evaluation for Church Planting: The MNA Assessment Center

Out of obedience to this sense of call, we applied to and were accepted into the Church Planting Assessment center of Mission to North America (MNA)—the PCA’s church planting agency—where we were assessed in the specific competencies for church planting, including:

• Vitality of spiritual life and family life. (including personal character and prayer life).
• Effectiveness in evangelism
• Evidence of entrepreneurial abilities
• Capacity for visionary leadership
  Gifts in preaching

This spiritual-360 evaluation culminated with us being recommended to church plant.

We then entered into a season of prayer & discernment with the PCA presbytery in Charlotte and together concluded that God was calling us to plant in Myers Park.

Myers Park Identified: A Strategic Need in the Historic-Core One of America’s Fastest Growing Cities

The PCA presbytery in Charlotte has wanted to plant a church in Myers Park for two decades. Why Myers Park specifically?

Myers Park a major center for cultural influence not only in Charlotte, but in North Carolina and the Southeastern US.

Myers Park and its adjacent neighborhoods have one of highest concentrations of mainline (non-evangelical) churches in US.

38 mainline churches, outnumber all evangelical churches combined 2 to 1.

A Fit Discerned and a Called Issued

One of the things we learned over the last several years in ministry is that it is important that there is a good fit between a pastor/planter & his family and the context that he and his family are ministering in. We also learned that fit should discern through prayer and with those who know you best and those who know that context best.

What came out of much prayer and conversations with mentors, friends, family and members of the presbytery was that our backgrounds and gifts would be a good fit for Myers Park, a highly educated community close to the urban core of Charlotte that contain natural points of connection with our backgrounds and experience.

The more we engaged in conversations with the presbytery in Charlotte the clearer it became that God was calling us to plant a church with them in Myers Park.

What Else Excites Us About Charlotte

Greg grew up in North Carolina and went to college in NC (UNC Chapel Hill).

We are excited to be moving back to his home state and to be able to put down long-term roots closer to our family (Christie also has family who live in the Charlotte area) and many friends who live in Charlotte and in North Carolina.

• Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in America and the number one moving destination for U-Haul.
• There are currently 2.8M people living in the Charlotte metropolitan area.
• The population of Charlotte is expected to grow by 65%  in the next 30 years (swelling to 4.6M people in 2055) as businesses and developments are coming to Charlotte.
• Charlotte is home to eight Fortune 500 companies and is one of the most important banking cities in the US.

Charlotte is No Longer the Bible Belt and is Place of Great need

• Did you know, the last 25 years have witnessed the fastest and most dramatic shift in church attendance in the history of our nation’s 250-year history?
• In last 25 years, 40 million adults, who used to attend church, have stopped going entirely (Jim Davis and Michael Graham;s book The Great Dechurching)
• 500,000 people in the Charlotte metro area have stopped going to church (for these statistics above, see Jim Davis and Michael Graham’s book The Great Dechurching).
• 83% of people in Charlotte do not hear the gospel preached on a weekly basis.

We are excited to be part of meeting this great need as we plant a church in the historic core of one of the US’s fastest growing cities.