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The corridor of U.S. 75 coming out of Dallas and running north to Sherman has seen so much population growth, particularly since 2020, that church planters have their hands full.
City Church Melissa started 11 years ago when the population of that town, located a little more than 20 miles north of Plano, was just 5,000. Now it’s more than 30,000.
“It really didn’t make a lot of earthly sense to plant a church, honestly, but we were sure the Lord had called us to it,” City Church Teaching Pastor Ryan Ross said.
Believing the local church is God’s primary agency for reaching the lost, City Church now plants churches. It supports five global church planters and two church plants along the Dallas-Sherman corridor.
Two years ago, City Church planted a church in Anna, and this past fall helped launch Family Church in Van Alstyne. City Church leaders have their eyes on reaching Howe or another area near Sherman next.
Much of the growth has been powered by corporate relocations, including Toyota and State Farm Insurance, with new subdivisions and infrastructure following.
“In Howe, there is a new 3,000-home development just announced,” Ross said. “That’s a huge development, one of the largest in the area. Sherman has the largest technology investment in the history of the United States made by Texas Instruments. They built four massive plants, and the first one just opened.”
Melissa, Anna, Van Alstyne, and Howe are old farming communities with strong public school systems and strong familial cultures, Ross said.
“That creates somewhat of a unique opportunity for us as church planters and believers because everybody shows up to the Friday night football games, and there’s pride in being a part of Van Alstyne or being a part of these communities, and there’s a connection,” he said.
Others have moved to the corridor from California in search of conservative Texas values, and such people are looking for churches.
“We also have a huge, growing population of internationals that are really from all over the world and ethnic populations that don’t know Jesus and don’t necessarily come here looking for a church,” Ross said.
Those demographics tend to search for community and relationships, so when believers open up their homes and explain that their motivation is Jesus, it opens doors for gospel ministry.
“Christians inviting others into their homes is a really great opportunity, and we see it producing a lot of fruit,” Ross said. “One of the things we say at our church is the front door of the church is the front door of your home.”
“It really didn’t make a lot of earthly sense to plant a church, honestly, but we were sure the Lord had called us to it.”
‘Kingdom-focused people’
As a church planting coach with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Ross got connected with Jonathan Yates, who knew a couple of years ago that God was leading him to plant a church in Van Alstyne.
Yates and his family joined City Church and became faithful members, learning firsthand how a church plant in that area could work. At the same time, the Yates family dove into getting to know their neighbors in Van Alstyne about 15 minutes away.
“My wife did a lot of walking. She met a lot of different ladies walking, and we just started having conversations with our neighbors,” Yates said. “We first just invited them over to get to know them, and it led to a Bible study.”
Yates had been a public school teacher in the past, and he knew one way to meet people in the community would be to substitute in the local school. That led to a more long-term position teaching sixth grade math.
Last September, City Church sent out the Yates family and another family to start Family Church. That plant in Van Alstyne has about 75 people on Sundays now. They meet in a building on the campus of First Baptist Church Van Alstyne. That SBTC church had built a new building and wasn’t using the old one on Sundays.
“There’s an established church that is a part of this great win for their city by supporting another church meeting in their old building,” Ross said. “They are kingdom-focused people.”
Family Church has three small groups meeting in homes, as well as a Friday morning men’s Bible study in a coffee shop, a Wednesday night student group, and a women’s Bible study.
“It was such a step of faith,” Yates said, “and then to see God answer all those prayers was an incredible thing.”
New churches can often be very effective in reaching people, Ross noted, in part because of the tenacity of a church planting team.
“There’s a hunger, so the reaching out that’s required to get something off the ground just causes us to be that much more evangelistic,” he said. “New churches are very, very effective in reaching the lost and unchurched.”
