Revitalizing Tabernacle Baptist Church

How God Uprooted Us

Eighteen months ago, God began stirring something in my heart that is now bearing visible fruit.

While leading a mission trip to Paris, our team spent an afternoon listening to IMB missionaries and journeymen share their stories. Many had walked away from careers, set aside degrees, and spent decades far from family and grandchildren. The purpose of the panel was simple: inspire those of us on a short-term trip to consider God’s mission more seriously.

I had sat in rooms like that before. But this time, God got my attention in a new way.

As I listened, a question unexpectedly surfaced in my mind: Did they waste their lives?

Almost as quickly, the answer came: Of course not.

And in that moment, something clarified in my calling to pastoral ministry. I sensed the Lord pressing this conviction into my heart:

Spend your life producing people like this.

Men and women who love God deeply, love others sacrificially, and love making disciples so much that they shape their entire lives around it, whether that leads them to Paris, to their workplace, or to faithfully serving as a stay-at-home parent.

A few months later, during our church’s annual Missions Festival, I found myself praying again. I participated with the rest of our church and asked God to help me understand how I was supposed to personally activate for the mission.

The Paris experience had faded into the background of daily ministry, until the reality struck me afresh. There are unreached people groups who will live and die without ever meeting a Christian or hearing the gospel.

So I asked the Lord:

“How am I supposed to activate for the mission?”

The answer I sensed was just as clear:

“Help lead a healthy church that sends missionaries.”

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what that would require. But God was already preparing the next step.

Mission-Driven Revitalization

In the Fall of 2025, God opened a door for our family that I believe is a clear next step to what God started those eighteen months ago.

I believe He is calling me to help lead a church revitalization right here in our city at Tabernacle Baptist Church on Leesville Road.

This is not about starting something new, but about helping breathe health, clarity, and mission into an existing church so that it can once again flourish and send disciple-makers into the world.

Right now, there is a church in Raleigh that is not sending missionaries.

And I believe God has given me, and a team He is assembling, the gifts and experience to help change that.

Healthy churches don’t exist for themselves. All the preaching, small groups, leadership development, and vision-setting must ultimately lead somewhere. All of it must lead people to grow to love God, love others, and make disciples. In other words, our prayer is that this church would grow to obey the Great Commandment to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

As we step into this next chapter, there is joy, anticipation, and also real weight. God is clearly opening a new door, but closing chapters always come with grief as well.

And yet, we are confident that God is at work.

Eighteen months ago, God began uprooting us so that we might be replanted at Tabernacle. Our prayer is that we would behold the beauty of Christ, the One who counted it joy to suffer to bring spiritually lost people back to God. (Hebrews 12:2). We long to join Him by entering into spiritually hard places for the sake of others’ spiritual good.

How You Can Be Part of This Work

This story isn’t just ours. It’s an invitation.

Pray that God would bring spiritual health, unity, and renewed mission to Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Join us if you sense God calling you to help love, serve, and rebuild a church so that we can send more disciple-makers into Raleigh and the world.

We believe God still delights in using ordinary people to build ordinary churches to showcase our extraordinary God. May this story echo 2 Corinthians 12:9 as we see just how sufficient His grace is despite our weaknesses.