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FORT WORTH?Two-and-a-half years ago Adam Clay and his wife, Diana, were working at Wal-Mart while Adam attended Southwestern Seminary. He was taking a church planting class with professor Daniel Sanchez then, and thinking of ways to minister to his co-workers. “One of the questions we asked was, ‘Why don’t you go to church?’ One of the biggest responses that came back was because Wal-Mart is a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week store. Everybody works on Sundays. So we asked, ‘What would happen if we started a church that met on Mondays. That’s kind of how my wife and I jumped in and started?with a couple of lost people from Wal-Mart who accepted Christ that first month. That was how we stumbled out of the gate.” Since then, Clay has helped start two more churches. Clay is pastor of The Hill, a house church in south Fort Worth. He also helps as a planter coach for The Way, also meeting in Fort Worth and led by William Butler, and Awakening Church in Cedar Hill, led by Joseph Cartwright. “I come alongside and help the planters develop a core group,” Clay said. Clay said many house churches begin as evangelistic Bible studies. “We have a couple of those going on as well that are meeting with lost people who are serious about studying the Bible and stuff like that. Our prayer is that as people accept Christ through that, that too will become a house church.” Clay said one goal of his is to see a “community of Christ” within walking distance of everybody in North America. “But within the next five years [our goal is] to see leaders raised up out of the harvest, and that’s kind of what our focus is. We’re not trying to take people from other churches. We’re trying to birth leaders straight out of the harvest who will be raised up to lead the community of Christ and transform the city and state,” Clay said. “Really, it’s people who are adults [who come] who have never been involved in church before. That’s what we find. Also, people who are hesitant to walk into a church building, people who work weekends.” For more information on house church planting, call the SBTC missions office at 817-552-2500 or toll free 877-953-7282. |
