This story isn’t about me; it’s about the history of a particular local church body and what God has done in and through it. However, this church is one where my wife and I are members, and so I am a part—however small a one—of this body’s fifty-year history. And, as I’ve been spending hours researching this project by collecting and compiling many other people’s stories, testimonies, and reflections about this church and what it’s meant to them, I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t add in my own testimony too.
2020 was a crazy and difficult year for everyone, but I dare say it had more challenges for us than for many others. In late 2019, I accepted a job with Seed Company, a mission organization based in Arlington, Texas. So my wife, Rachel, and I were preparing to move cross-country from our Lynchburg, Virginia home in the first week of the new year. Weeks before the move—and days before Christmas—we discovered that Rachel was pregnant with our first child. So, with a pregnant wife who was having bad nausea and had thrown out her back, we packed up everything we owned and made the two-day trek to the Lone Star State. For the next couple of months, we tried to settle into our new home, my new job, and our new lives.
And then, in March, the world shut down due to COVID-19, and I began working from home (after moving across the country to be part of an in-person, in-office team). Our counselor told us that moving, beginning a new job, and having a child—while all good things in our case—are some of the biggest stressors in life. While I’m not sure if the experts have updated their official lists yet, I think we could confidently add “global pandemic” to that list too.
In January and February, we’d at least begun meeting people and making friends in Texas—almost entirely through my work, since we hadn’t found a church yet and work was our only social circle. Some of the first and best friends we made were the Guthries. Chris Guthrie (with a few other guys) helped me unload the moving truck the day after we arrived. I learned that he’d joined Seed Company only about two months sooner than I had, so he (along with his wife Megan and their three teens/preteens) were also new to the area. They’d come from living in Australia as missionaries, although Megan was originally from Virginia, so we had that in common. The Guthries had us over for dinner one night, and we quickly bonded over being new and not knowing anyone else. So, when they told us about Christ Community Bible Church, it was less like “This is our church and we’d love for you to join us!” and more like “We’re church-shopping too, but we discovered this one last week, and we liked it!”
So we did visit CCBC a couple of times even before the pandemic. Multiple people at the church have since told me things along the lines of that, the first time they came, the church was like a breath of fresh air to them, and they knew right away that they wanted to join. Maybe I’m more critical or less emotional than others, but that wasn’t my experience. I liked the church, enjoyed the preaching, and certainly felt welcomed on our first visit. But I’d had similar experiences at other churches we’d visited too. During the church-shopping process, Rachel and I said we were blessed in that Arlington had many good options, and none of the ones we visited were bad. Maybe some weren’t right for us, but none was terrible or heretical. While there was a lot to like, visiting CCBC wasn’t love at first sight for me. (I didn’t even believe in love at first sight…until my son was born six months later.)
Actually, as Murphy’s Law would have it, it often seemed that we visited a church on a day when the main pastor happened to be absent. On our first visit to CCBC, one of the elders, Rich Caskey, preached from the book of Daniel. On our second visit a few weeks later, if memory serves, Jerod Gilcher (the senior pastor) was there, but preaching a rare topical series on prayer. Due to the church tradition I grew up in, I preferred expository preaching through a specific book of the Bible, and (while I now know differently), I couldn’t tell at first that CCBC valued that same method. I remember thinking, “If this is a Bible Church, then shouldn’t they teach the Bible all the way through?” Rachel and I began to realize, in fairness, that you can’t get a full sense of a church body’s regular rhythm from visiting only once or even on two non-consecutive Sundays.
Still, there was a lot we were impressed with that kept CCBC among our top church choices. I remember being eagerly greeted on our first visit by Vlad Bublik, a young man who treats strangers like friends and whose enthusiasm is known to all in the church. Tommy Thomason (I don’t think he was officially an elder until later, though he is now) introduced himself and befriended us too. In one of those funny coincidences that always remind you of how small the world is, we learned that he formerly taught at Liberty University (where we’d both graduated from) in Lynchburg—and had even lived on the same street as Rachel once did! The church also sold a variety of books as theological resources (which we appreciated as avid readers), and as first-time visitors we were allowed to choose one for free (I picked up Paul Tripp’s Parenting book, knowing I’d soon have cause to read it).
A few other Seed Company employees attended CCBC at the time too: Luke Vakis along with Larry and Linda Jones (Larry had just been named the company’s interim president and CEO, and the “interim” part was dropped a little later). Actually, in an ironic twist, Larry called me one day—not as my workplace’s CEO but as an elder of the church, checking in with the congregants to see how we were doing amid the pandemic. But since I was new and we’d only met a few times, Larry didn’t realize that I was the same Sam who’d been hired recently. He asked if we were having any financial difficulties, and I told him we were okay, as I’d still been able to work from home. Then he asked, “What kind of work do you do again?” And I said, “Larry…I work for Seed Company!”
When we did get a chance to meet Pastor Jerod, we appreciated his enthusiasm and vision for the church. He was also new there, having come to serve as pastor about a year earlier. And, following a difficult transition period in the church, he had a 20-year-plan to rebuild the small body from the ground up, focusing initially on internal church health and eventually expanding to community and global outreach. We were immediately impressed with Jerod’s level of commitment, planning, and intentionality to carry out his calling so well.
In some ways, the pandemic made church-shopping easier, as we could get at least a sampling of nearly any church we wanted in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex without leaving the comforts of our home (not that merely hearing a sermon is the same as going in person). We did virtually visit a few other churches that I’d heard about, but ultimately CCBC was still on our short list, and we soon realized they were streaming their services online too. Rachel and I watched Jerod’s engaging, passionate preaching as he was still going through the book of Daniel (so I realized that, apart from the brief topical interlude we’d seen, they were going through a book of the Bible regularly and consistently). And, as it was a series, we started to say things like, “Well, I guess we have to listen next week too so we can hear the second part!” In fact, Rachel’s parents came to visit us once and watched CCBC with us one Sunday. And they liked it so much that they went home and looked up Jerod’s other sermons in the series too!
Before we got married, Rachel and I had actually come from different church backgrounds and theological traditions. Even in Virginia in 2019, we’d been looking for our church home as a newly married couple—and we’d almost settled on one before moving forced us to begin that process over again. One of our areas of disagreement had been eschatology, or one’s theology of the end times—which also happens to be a heavy topic in the book of Daniel. But as we listened to Jerod teach and talked about what we were hearing, we found that we both liked and could get on board with the way he was presenting the issues. So the church’s—and Jerod’s—theological stances became another draw for us.
By June, we’d been watching CCBC consistently for several weeks and were fairly sure that was where we wanted to end up. And when things with the pandemic began to look like they were winding down (how little we knew then, right?), CCBC opened up again too. Since Rachel was pregnant, she was potentially more susceptible to the virus if she were to be exposed. They’d also told her that, if she tested positive for COVID when the baby was born, then she’d be quarantined away from the baby for two weeks. We wanted to avoid that at all costs, and so—while not yielding to absolute panic—we tried to be extra cautious. We decided that we’d pretty much go nowhere unless it was absolutely essential for the last month or so before the August due date. But June was still in the clear, so I went one Sunday (I believe it was Father’s Day, actually) to scope it out for Rachel.
After the service, I talked to Jerod (for only like the second time ever) and said something to the effect of: “Hey, remember me? So, my wife and I are pretty sure we want to come here. But also, she’s pregnant and we’re being extra cautious, so you might not see us in person for a couple months! Weird timing, right?” Jerod was very gracious and welcoming, despite the strange circumstances. He even invited us over for dinner, so in early July we went over to his house, met his family, and felt even more welcomed.
August came around, and Benny, our beautiful baby boy, was born right on schedule. Having your first kid is a joyful but stressful experience for anyone. But again, having a pandemic baby after moving far away from family added an extra layer to the stress.
Here’s the part that gets me, though: CCBC created a meal train for us. That’s not an unusual thing for a church to do, but you have to remember that we could count on one hand the times we’d been there in person, and a lot of people had no idea who we were yet. Yes, the few people we’d met brought us meals: Sarah (Jerod’s wife), Debby (Tommy’s wife), Larry, and Vlad with his wife Victoria. But people we didn’t even know yet also showed up to bring us meals. Some ladies who Rachel is now close to through her Bible study group met us for the first time by bringing food to our house: Cathy Tinklenberg, Christy McDonald, and Tammy Montee. Judy Van Rooy (then a stranger) also brought us a meal, and others (if they were concerned about going out or meeting in person) even sent us gift cards in the mail. We felt blessed and greatly encouraged that the church would do this for us when we had just barely joined or gotten to meet anyone yet. We were strangers in a strange land, miles away from either of our families, and having a child with almost no support system other than my new job. But CCBC was quickly becoming that support system for us.
The meal train from virtual strangers was a major example of how we experienced this church’s hospitality and generosity firsthand. But it certainly hasn’t been the only example. In November, our Thanksgiving travel plans got canceled, also due to pandemic-related concerns from our extended family. But Jerod invited us over to his house for Thanksgiving dinner, along with a few others who didn’t have anywhere to go that year. Also, Debby kept insisting that we ask her to babysit Benny whenever we needed to go out. With the neediness of a newborn, it took until the new year before Rachel and I were ready to try going on a date by ourselves, but when we did, Tommy and Debby came over to babysit free of charge—and have done so many times since then. In fact, they’ve kind of “adopted” us and have doted on our child when our parents have been too far away to do so, buying him toys and treats and playing with him at church. Even more than his own peers in the nursery, Tommy and Debby are the people Benny is always most excited to see when we go to church.
In the interviews I’ve conducted for this project, when I’ve asked people about the best aspects of CCBC—the thing that, in some cases, has kept them faithfully coming to this church for up to fifty years—two of the main answers I’ve heard repeatedly are the strong theological teaching and the love and care of the congregation. I can honestly say that this rings true of our experience too. While the church has gone through many changes in half a century, these things have by and large stayed the same.
Christ Community isn’t a perfect church (there is no such thing). I’ve had some relatively minor theological differences with their positions (some of which I’ve reconsidered since attending). I’ve had conflicts and disagreements with other church members that I’ve needed to work through. We’ve even had some concerns that we thought were important enough to bring to Pastor Jerod (and he’s graciously and humbly listened and taken our concerns seriously). It’s a church full of sinners (one of whom is me, and I know how problematic I can be), and so it’s far from perfect, still growing and learning and striving toward goals we haven’t yet achieved.
But this is a faithful church—a generous, hospitable, and loving church that prioritizes Jesus Christ and the members of the body. It’s a church where we’ve experienced great care and support and continue to experience it on a weekly basis. I’m very thankful that God led us here, and—perhaps more so than at any other time in our lives—Rachel and I greatly appreciate being part of an active body that exemplifies Christian love by taking care of its own so well.
At the beginning of this foreword, I said that this story isn’t about me. It’s about the church—one small, local church in particular. But a church is made up of people, and our church wouldn’t be what it is without the people who call it home. In the following pages, I’ll attempt to name and give credit to many of the people who have faithfully formed and served this church over its long history. As with any biblical church, it’s a body made up of many members (1 Corinthians 12:12), and I know I won’t be able to speak with, or even name, every single one. On this journey I’ve done several interviews with longstanding members and former church leaders—but for each such person I do talk to, they bring up several more names who I haven’t gotten to talk to yet, making me realize more and more that I have only limited time and resources to put this project together. I can’t possibly do justice to them all, but I’m grateful for the many faithful saints who have formed this body over the years. Some I’ve been blessed to know in person during my relatively recent membership here. Others I’ve only crossed paths with only briefly on this journalistic journey of mine. And some have now gone to heaven before I ever got a chance to know them, but I feel like I’ve gotten to know them a little through the testimonies of their family and close friends. I look forward to us all celebrating together in the coming kingdom.
But, lest I be remiss, I must state what should be obvious. This story isn’t about me, but it isn’t really about this particular church either. The real hero of this story is Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, who continues to build up his church into a faithful and holy bride (Ephesians 5:27). The testimonies you’ll read here about joyful fellowship, impactful preaching, and acts of Christlike love are testimonies not to our credit, but to God’s. He is the one working in and through all of us, the Church universal, to function as the body of Christ; apart from him, we could do nothing (John 15:5). If any part of my following writing fails to make that clear or seems to inordinately glorify the efforts of mere men, then please hear that that is not my intention, because the real glory belongs to Christ alone.
I hope the following pages will give you a renewed appreciation of the church Christ is building and how that church has been a blessing to so many people.