Core Team Intro: Terrell + Laurel
Terrell’s/Laurel’s Testimony & Calling to Pioneer
How We Met:
Terrell: Being in a “single” stage of life, I did not think that I was going to meet my future fiancé at a wedding we mutually attended. However, thankfully God had other plans! He pressed it upon my heart to go introduce myself to Laurel. After talking for 3 hours that evening, I asked her on a date for the upcoming Friday. Roughly 10 months later, we are engaged to be married!
Laurel: Similarly, I was not expecting a life changing interaction at the wedding last year. Terrell introduced himself to me and within 5 minutes, we were sharing with one another what the Lord was doing in our lives. One deep conversation after another, I knew I wanted to see him again. Now, we are engaged and excited to spend our lives serving the Lord together!
Our Testimonies:
Terrell: I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home where my father lived out his faith and taught us in the way of the Lord. After the loss of my mom to cancer, my dad remarried and moved us to South Carolina from Pennsylvania. Immediately, we began attending Calvary church in Charlotte, NC. At Calvary, God used the preaching of His Word to call me into salvation. With various trials through high school and college, I felt my faith slipping in undergrad. The cares of the world, rather than for God, dominated my heart. Out of the blue, a friend from school invited me to Park Baptist. What seemed like a random happening, turned out to be a monumental shift in my walk with Christ.
Laurel: Like Terrell, I grew up in a Christian family with loving parents and a younger brother. As I reflected on my childhood, I realized that my faith piggybacked off my parents. Our family went to church each week, but my faith didn’t go much deeper than that. It wasn’t until college that I recognized how shallow my knowledge of the gospel was and that I was not following Jesus or in a personal relationship with Him. Because I found my identity in sin, I was met with perpetual failures due to unwise choices followed by disastrous consequences. With my life in shambles, the Lord had brought me to my knees. It was then that I surrendered the control I thought I had and desired to truly know who died to pay for it all. Since that tear-filled prayer, the Lord has begun a great work of making my heart and life look more like Jesus Christ.
Our prayer process about joining Pioneer Church:
Terrell: When I first heard Trell preach at Park Baptist Church, I felt God stirring in my heart to follow him in the church plant. It did not come easy though. Looking back on it now, my instinct to quiet the Holy Spirit’s prompting is not surprising. I could easily excuse it away because of Park’s impact on my life. However, God continued to chisel away my stubbornness. For months now, I have gone to the Lord in prayer asking him if this is right for me. The dynamic of these prayers changed as I began a relationship with Laurel. Nevertheless, the prayer journey continued with even more vigor. As our relationship deepened, I prayed about how this church-move would affect my future family. Is this the wise move for us? What will be the challenges I foresee? Am I equipped to join a church plant? As we continued in prayer (now more together than separate), we felt a peace with the decision to follow the strong leadership of this Godly brother. We knew it would prune us in areas that needed refining, and we welcomed the opportunity of service and leadership that a church plant presents.
Laurel: This past summer, I had the privilege of meeting Trell and Lauren through GenLink at Park Baptist Church. During those weekly meetings, I was encouraged to witness Trell’s leadership, spiritual maturity, and gift in spurring others towards Christ. I began praying about joining the Pioneer team after the Lord made it clear that He was calling Terrell and I to marry each other. As I asked the Lord what His will was for our future ministry together, I felt an overwhelming peace about joining Pioneer Church. We also prayed together, and the Lord filled our hearts with excitement. Because Terrell and I desire to see God work through us for His glory, we believe the Lord has called us to step out in faith, trusting that He wants to use us like never before.
Pioneer Plant:
We are excited about joining Pioneer because we believe the local church body is fundamental to a believer’s life.
In Acts 2, we see Peter preaching to a crowd at Pentecost, saying “repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). But Peter doesn’t stop there. These newly baptized believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer…And the Lord added to their number day by day” (Acts 2:42-47). We see that those who came to believe in Jesus Christ started to gather together in the temple, eat at one another’s homes, and join in fellowship. In our experience, the local church body has deeply impacted our faith in Jesus, uniting us as one body under one Lord with one gospel.
Additionally, the apostle Paul compares the church to the human body saying, “For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). Paul is showing us that just as each body part plays a unique role, every person, joined in membership of a local body, is needed by that church.
Throughout 2020, we have witnessed God’s graciousness in our lives—from engagement to commitment to Pioneer Church. With many changes ahead, we pray that God leads us to rely on His strength. We serve knowing that God will sustain us and supply us with His strength! (1 Peter 4:10-11)