Hearing the Call
WASHINGTON D.C. — Greg Gibson had already planted one church in Washington, D.C., so he chuckled when his friend Clint Clifton called him three years ago and asked, “Do you think you have another church plant in you?”
But the more Greg thought about Clint’s passing comment, the more he couldn’t get it off his mind.
“God has always used moments like that through his people, where a seed gets planted in my heart that then starts to blossom and grow over time,” he shares.
Mere months after that phone call, Clint Clifton was killed in a plane crash, and the Gibson family found themselves back in the D.C. area to attend his funeral. Sitting in a crowd of several hundred people who had been impacted by Clint’s life and ministry, Greg felt an overwhelming sense of void in the city he’d once called home.
“Clint had an amazing gift set and influence in D.C. with his ability to come alongside planters and train, galvanize, and send them,” Greg reflects, “so by no means did I think there was any one person who could fill his shoes, but I knew that enough of us needed to carry the baton.”
In the days that followed, the Gibson family began to feel an aching pull to return to D.C. to plant another church. So, the following summer, they packed yet another moving truck in Knoxville and moved back to the Monument City, expectant for what God would do next.
Engaging the City
The Gibson’s Sending Church, Foothills Church in Knoxville, knew the Gibsons as a church-planting family, and were excited to partner with them in ministry again.
“When we moved here last August, I spent the first couple of months building a team doing a ton of personal evangelism and the ministry of invitation,” says Greg.
The Gibsons opened their home for a weekly Bible study that grew to 50 people in a matter of months. Every Sunday evening, kids swarmed through their halls while adults gathered in the living room.
“The Bible study became the net. We were inviting everyone into it, and then out of the Bible study, we built our core team,” Greg explains. “Church planting is a team sport. If you’re planting on your own, there’s going to be deficiencies and blind spots in the church early on, so the first step is always to build a team.”
Making Disciples
But building a team to plant a church in a fast-paced environment like D.C., where time is often the biggest premium in people’s lives, doesn’t come without its challenges.
“It creates an interesting dynamic for churches and church planters, because people are ultimately going to give their time to something that will add value to their lives,” Greg observes.
Nations Church faced that challenge head-on by offering a gospel-centered life purpose to the people they interacted with. As they introduced people in their city to God’s greater mission, they started to witness these goal-driven individuals get excited about the role they can play in expanding God’s kingdom.
“We’re seeing a lot of people come into our orbit who are saying, ‘I once had a mission.I was once former military. I was once working in the State Department, or whatever it might be. But now I have a greater mission,’” shares Greg.
Not long ago, Greg shared with one such individual a message like the one Clint Clifton relayed to him three years ago in that phone call that Greg still can’t get out of his head.
“I shared with him that I could see him being an amazing church planter,” he says. “And since then, he has this transformed belief in himself, and we’ve started meeting together every week for pastoral development.”
Planting a Church
Today, Nations Church regularly sees 75 people engaged in weekly services and activities, which are held weekly at a middle school in Louden County. Much like the city of D.C., their church welcomes people from all over the world, including Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Korea, China, Columbia, Peru, and Vietnam.
This summer, the church launched kids’ and student ministries to reach the next generation and started more life groups for adults. An entire family recently followed in believer’s baptism, and the church continues to grow.
“Our vision is the reach the nations by loving our neighbors,” says Greg.
Reaching the Nations
In a city as diverse as Washington, D.C., reaching the nations is a mission that feels close to home. That’s why Nations Church regularly invites international pastors ministering to ethnic groups in D.C. to share about their ministries with the congregation.
“If we can plant churches in Washington D.C., I think we can also plant churches with different ethnic groups in Washington, D.C., and then maybe God will allow us to plant churches and help catalyze church planting work in different places around the world,” Greg shares.
Just weeks after their public launch this past March, the church commissioned and sent their first overseas missionary to Warsaw, Poland to work with Ukrainian refugees.
“We want to be a multiplying church,” Greg says. “And our goal is to plant as many churches as God would allow locally and globally.”
Comments