2025 Charge Conference Report of the Pastor

Dear Theophilus,

Praise the Lord! Greetings to you in the marvelous name of Jesus, our Savior and Lord. It is my absolute honor to write and tell you of what the Lord our God has done among us this past year and how He is currently modeling and shaping us for His tomorrows.

The harvest is plentiful within our mission field. In the last 25 years, Johnston County has grown 105% to a population just shy of a quarter of a million (US CENSUS data). The consultants at Church Answers have reported to us over 100,000 people live within a 15-minute drive of our future church campus on Loop Road. Within the next five years, a 20% increase in population is expected. We believe the Lord has raised up the people called Clayton Methodist to be the workers in this field.

We have witnessed the Lord do many wonderful, amazing deeds in the brief history of our two-and-a-half-year-old congregation. This church was planted to be a Methodist congregation with traditional values for the growing communities surrounding Clayton, North Carolina. We have welcomed refugees from other expressions of Methodism and new neighbors seeking Christian community. We welcome the growth and are navigating the challenges which come with change.

The temporary base of our ministry and mission continues to be the Clayton Civitan Club building. Our growing congregation continues creative planning and scheduling to balance ministry needs, wants, and desires within the confines of our agreements. This requires patience and compromise by everyone. Our full-time meeting / office space serves many functions during the week with multiple age groups with different needs. These are good growing pains.

About this time two years ago, we identified a future gathering location about four miles to the northeast of our temporary base. An amazing confluence of events led to the reality of purchasing this open field for the Kingdom of God. Just one month ago, we burned the loan note during a celebratory worship service within the painted outline of the envisioned sanctuary and ministry building. As we celebrate, we prayerfully request for God’s resources to be released for the construction phase of this future building.

While God has assembled a talented group to work on the design and construction of a church building, I recognize God’s call on my life is to just build the church – the people of God gathered to comprise his body.

At the beginning of the calendar year, we welcomed an existing Methodist Hispanic congregation as a part of our church body. They desired to relocate back to Clayton where they began. Our goal is to become one church with multiple worshipping congregations. An Exploration Team has been working throughout the year to guide the integration and unification of two churches to be one church. We are diligently learning the differences in our cultures, our languages, our expectations, and our missional emphases. We look to the early church for how they navigated welcoming the Gentiles into a predominated Jewish Christian movement.

It is amazing how the people who follow Christ have come to this refugee church with different experiences and visions of how a new church should be organized, led, employed, and deployed. The people called Clayton Methodist have come from 37 different churches not counting the many different church affiliations people have had within their lifetimes. This introduces growing pains as God stretches us to form a new body from many different parts. Occasionally, this demands weighing equally good options as we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s plan for us. God is doing a new thing in Clayton and in our lives. We are constantly remembering Jesus’ caution about pouring new wine into old wine skins. As a new church with new opportunities for the Lord to create a unique church, we move forward with watchful eyes to protect against forcing the newness into older models of church that once served their purpose in the days of yore. The church needs to stretch beyond old ways as we have been raised up for such a time as 21st century Clayton.

Our recent implementation of a new worship schedule models the cautious exploration into new ministry. In January with the addition of the Hispanic congregation, a second worship experience was added – Sunday afternoons in Spanish. At that time, we were already months into planning a multiplication of the English worship experience. The numerical attendance growth and the desire for more uniform worship styles pushed the move from one worship experience with a blending of musical styles and liturgies to two unique worship expressions. After a year of researching, planning, and preparing, a new Sunday morning worship schedule was implemented. Service One gathers at 9am with traditional music and liturgical forms. Service Two gathers at 10:30am with more modern songs and less liturgical elements. I hope the latter fits a more Ancient-Future worship model. God provided new musical leadership for each worship service. We have encouraged people to develop a servant posture to answer their call of ministry to one another by engaging in roles of servanthood during one worship service, so they may be fully present to the Holy Spirit in the other worship experience. After the first six weeks, people are beginning to gravitate to the style of worship which allows them to naturally express their adoration of the Lord. An alternative time also allows options to meet people’s needs and lifestyles. The congregation is to be commended for the patience in the development of a new worship schedule with different worship expressions. The fruitfulness is evident among the congregations in their joy of the Lord on Sunday mornings.

As the first part of our Global Methodist mission is to “make disciples of Jesus Christ,” in 2025 we emphasized increasing the discipleship of the members through participation in small groups. Since the inception of Clayton Methodist, there were ten groups – some continuing from a previous affiliation and others beginning anew. At the start of the year, five new groups started (three Life Groups and two Discipleship training courses). This fall we added four new groups (two Life Groups, a Discipleship training course, and a Bible Study) for a total of 18 small groups. These new groups opened new opportunities for fellowship and accountable discipleship. The fall launch of new groups increased the participation of professing members by over 23% (net 16 people). The total enrollment in small groups is 117 unique individuals, which includes constituents and friends of the congregation. As our membership vows call us to faithful, transformational discipleship, we will continue to provide new opportunities and be invitational to raise the level of involvement in discipleship.

For the approaching year, we will continue to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.