Christ Church Hickory Visit

Last Thursday, we loaded up the van to travel to Hickory North Carolina to visit Christ Church. The Beeson program provides students to visit a church they want to in order to see transferable principles they can use in their next setting. I chose this church for several reasons: first, it had grown from 150 to 2200 in worship over the past eight years; second, this had been done in a rural area and since east Tennessee is rural I thought it would have many crossover principles. Thirdly, the pastor Charles Kyker is a former Beeson pastor and gave me accessibility to meet with his staff. Fourth, Kate did youth ministry with their youth minister 15 years ago and we have connected some in recent years. John and his wife Anita are in the picture below. Fifth, they were hosting a church growth conference that weekend so I would get to hear more from their staff.



I chose a hotel in the area with a pool and hot tub. The kids loved the pool and I think swam every day. Max turned eight this weekend and we had a special meal with him at Olive Garden and opened presents.Maggie and I got up the last day earlier to have breakfast at the hotel. The conference we attended was called LEAP (see picture below). They went all out for this conference. About 100 people participated in it. They even had LEAP M&M's.


This is their main worship facility where they held the conference and where they have four services on the weekend, three on sunday and one saturday night.


History - About 20 people formed this church 15 years ago in the chapel of a Lutheran Church. They eventually met in a storefront church (see below) for a number of years. when Pastor Charles came in 1998, they began to grow by about 30% a year and have averaged that pace over the past 8 years. Charles' gift is in casting a vision of being a church that reaches the unchurched thousands to make them fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

In 2002, they moved to this facility about 5 miles away.

They are a seeker driven church, meaning they exist and try to reach people who don't go to church. They believe worship starts as soon as people drive in the parking lot and do everything they can to make them feel welcome. (see Below). Last year they had 68 people become members of the church by profession of faith. 105 transfered their membership to Christ church in addition in 2006.

This is their current space for kids programming but was set up on Friday nights for Celebrate Recovery, a Christian 12 step program focusing on helping people find freedom from their addictions. They actually bus people in from this program. About 100 attend from week to week and 60% of their population do not go to this church.

This is their Celebrate Recovery Resource center.They exploded when they entered their new facility and soon plans were underway to create a larger worship space. When that space was built (see below), the children took over all the other space for their programs (pictures above).

One of the neat things about the service is that they have a prayer garden in the back of the worship space where people can pray with lay-pastors at the end of the service. This space is where people can pray silently and they have packets available for those who decide to follow Christ.

Another neat thing they do is they have a time in the service when people can submit prayer requests on a sheet of paper. Each Tuesday the staff divides up each request and prays for each request made. Each request is followed up with a card to the person making the request knowing that it was prayed for and signed by the staff members. John told me recently that one wife prayed for her husband almost every week for 9 years and two weeks ago he accepted Christ and joined the church last week. These are exciting stories.

They are beginning a capital campaign during lent are are praying for 3 million dollars to be pledged over three years to pay for their buildings and future growth. They are praying for 1 million to be collected on April 1st to jump start their giving. It is exciting to see that they are giving 10% to churches around the world and are sponsoring building a church in Bulgaria that has limited funds. The rest is being used to pay down debt, spruce up the children's facility and provide seed money for the St. Stephens site to buy land for a church.

Sunday morning I got up and went to two worship services. Pictures here are from their St. Stephens campus which meets in a high school. They launched in October and last week had 336 people attend. It is going strong. This is their welcome area that has donut, drinks and coffee.

This is the front of the school. It rained heavily that day and the picture wasn't the best. I didn't dare take a picture of the service. The neat thing about this church as well is they have it translated into spanish so the latino community might be able to worship as well.

If you are interested in learning more, go to www.christnc.com