Mission Alive

The Chappotin Family

1st Communion

A Baptism

Chris and Heidi Chappotin have spent most of their married life in ministry.  While students at Abilene Christian University, they worked with an inner-city church planting called New Life, sponsored by the Southern Hills Church of Christ in Abilene.  They began serving as volunteers, Chris then became a part-time and finally a full-time minister on the staff.

After five years with New Life, Chris served as a very effective youth minister at the Westside Church of Christ in Cleburne, TX., and ministered with them three years.  Chris and Heidi, however, saw the growth of urban Fort Worth and began to feel a desire to plant churches in the emerging suburbs of this city.  Not knowing how to make this dream a reality, Chris resigned as youth minister and took a secular job.  He wanted to use this time for prayer, reflection and seeking direction.  God opened the door to church planting ministry when a past mentor directed the Chappotins to Mission Alive.  

After a time of prayer and introspection, Chris and Heidi participated in a Mission Alive Discovery Lab to determine if they had the aptitudes, gifts and abilities to be church planters and to evaluate their family readiness to church plant.  At the exit interview of this lab we were honored to ask them to enter Mission Alive and plant a church with a strong mentor and coach. 

Chris and Heidi then participated in two other preparation labs, a Theology for Church Planting Lab and a Church Planting Strategy Lab.  The Theology Lab, facilitated by Leonard Allen, provides biblical understandings for church planting.  It guides church planters to understand their place in the mission of God and plant churches that reflect the nature of God.  The Church Planting Strategy Lab equips church planting families with multiple tools to initiate churches through developing a core team, teaching unbelievers, nurturing new Christians to maturity, and training leaders.  A detailed working plan for church planting is developed during this lab.  Just before the Strategy Lab Chris took a leap of faith and quit his job, despite not yet having adequate finances for the church planting, and became full-time in planning and preparing for the church plant.  This step required great courage and confidence that God would provide.

And God has provided!  Heidi’s grandfather, a 40-year elder of the Burleson Church of Christ, announced to the family, “We are going to support this church planting!”  Some of the larger supporters during these early days of 2005 have been Heidi’s grandparents, uncles and aunts, and Christian friends who believed in Chris and Heidi.  Heidi continued to work part-time in her mother’s business.  Soon new Christians began to tithe.  As the church headed toward their public launch, one family generously provided a trailer for the use of the growing church and the speaker and sound system.  Finally, the Preston Road Church of Christ, seeing such great steps of faith and the church’s effectiveness in reaching the unreached, stepped forward as a partnering, supporting church.  We have seen that financial resources tend to follow visionary leadership and godly commitment.

Mission Alive believes that no family or individual should plant a church alone but should rather work within an environment of encouragement and guidance.  Therefore, Mission Alive worked with Chris and Heidi to find a coach to help them with strategies for church planting and a mentor to help them maintain and strengthen their family and spiritual lives.  Jim Reppart, past missionary to Kenya, serves as the Chappotins’ coach and Phil and Rebecca Jackson, past missionaries to Romania, serve as their mentors.   Later as their church planting got underway they also participated with the Van Rheenens in Networkings for church planters.  The church planters met with the Van Rheenens and some of their coaches to share what they are doing and to make further plans for the future in a day-long collaborative retreat. 

During the first months of 2005, Chris and Heidi worked with Christian friends and acquaintances to form a vocational mission team and to equip them for ministry within the new church planting.  Hands-on training in evangelism has been part of this process.  Their small group of 8-10 Christians reached out to the community through sports evangelism in a neighborhood park, a summer tutoring program for children, a “KidsCamp” in a local park, and spiritual friendships with numerous acquaintances.  As a result, this small group has phenomenally grown to over 40 people meeting in one house church.  Nominal and unfaithful Christians have been restored to walk with the Lord!  Searchers and skeptics have come to know the Lord! 

Sue Salazar, for example, was searching for meaning and focus in her life and for those of her extended family.  Chris Chappotin met her in front of her house and eventually invited her to their house church.  She not only came but brought her daughters, their children, one husband, one boy friend, and her son.  We rejoice that Sue Salazar, her daughter Tiffany, and her boy friend (now husband) Michael Davis were baptized into Christ on July 3, 2005.  Sue’s son Dennis has been so touched by the contact with changed lives that he has said he would like to “be like that man” (meaning Chris).  With tears he decided to go into a drug rehabilitation program and clean himself up so that he could fully follow Jesus.  Over a period of time the core team in training has become a vibrant house church, where searchers and skeptics come to hear the gospel. 

On August 14 this developing church multiplied into a network of three small groups meeting at various times during the week.   These small groups provide an intimate setting for spiritual formation, a place to . . .

• apply the Word of God to life,
• empathetically nurture each other to handle the struggles and temptations of life,
• pray for God’s help, direction, and healing,
• minister as a team among searchers and skeptics, and
• identify spiritual gifts.

The major focus of these small groups is to provide a personal, family-style, often intimate forum of spiritual formation.  These groups provide another setting to help people to be transformed into the image of God under the hand of God’s Holy Spirit.  

On Sept. 25, the church launched their first public meeting.  110 people were in attendance—80 adults and 30 children.  Because the church did not have adequate funds to publicize their launch, every person attending came because of special invitation and personal connection.   The service was touching.  God was glorified, hearts were turned more fully to God, commitments were made to follow God more fully.  Chris Chappotin told the story of God’s work in beginning the church.  Sue Salazar gave testimony of her conversion and that of her family.  Communion around the Lord’s table celebrated God’s faithfulness.

Infinite God can be seen working through finite humans in every step of church planting from lab preparation to team formation to simple church to multiple cells (churches) to public launch (comprised of the multiple small groups or little churches) as it develops the infrastructure to present the gospel both publicly and from house to house. 

The Chappotins and their core team have realized that they are on a journey very similar to that of Peter when he was led to Joppa to teach Cornelius and his household.   This was not a secular journey to become wealthy or humanly successful but a journey to know and walk with God.  Both Christians (like Peter who realized that he should enter Gentile homes and teach the gospel) and unbelievers are being shaped on this spiritual pilgrimage.  Consequently, after a lengthy time of reflection the community of faith decided to call this new church Christ Journey.  Because they are restoration people, a subtitle, “a church of Christ family,” was added to define our heritage.

This church is firmly rooted in the Stone-Campbell heritage.  To heighten their effectiveness, both Chris and Heidi are beginning a Masters in Christian Ministry degree through Abilene Christian University by taking a few courses each year.  They believe in the priesthood of all believers and implement this practice in their churches.  They believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are central to a Christian worldview.  As believers, they worship God who sent Christ to die for us as remembered in the Lord’s Supper and understand that baptism is our participation in his death, burial, and resurrection. 

Chris and Heidi have been married eight years.  When they were married, Heidi became a Chappotin but did not cease being a Toole.  She is, although of a new generation, very close to her parents, uncles and aunts, and grandparents.  Likewise, Christ Journey has no desire to give up her relationship with her spiritual parents, uncles and aunts, and grandparents in the faith. 

The goal of Mission Alive is to be used by God to develop a church planting movement in North America.  Missionary strategist David Garrison, author of Church Planting Movements (International Mission Board, 2000), describes a process in which national leaders (in the case of Mission Alive multiple church planting leaders) are equipped to plant churches which plant churches which plant still other churches.  For instance, the goals of Christ Journey are to plant three suburban churches and five apartment churches among the poor by 2015.  The goals of Mission Alive are to plant 70 reproductive churches in suburban and urban areas in North America, 100 apartment churches among the poor, develop 15 Strategy Teams in various urban contexts for recruiting, equipping, and supporting church plantings, and equip 300 summer interns as evangelists and 100 year-long apprentices to become church planters and leaders in church-planting churches.

We hope that your congregation will develop the vision to partner with Mission Alive to plant growing mission-focused churches like Christ Journey (http://www.christjourney.net).