Sunday morning, and we wanted to meet with a church community. Our local church, North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, has partner churches all over the U.S. that we support with leadership coaching, sermon aids, and ways of leading a church that we’ve found helpful. Barney put all of these locations on our travel map so we could visit if we were in the area. Today was such a day.
We found RCC, Rivertown Community Church, in Fairhope, AL. This small, local church community is part of network of churches in the gulf coast area led by Paul and Melodie whose larger church community is in the Florida panhandle.
Paul’s philosophy is that any town large enough to have a Dollar Tree is large enough to have a network church. By having the help that NPCC provides, local churches don’t need a large staff. Fairhope is a good size town (and one we want to come back to!), and RCC joined the network Paul leads about half a year ago and is doing a great job of reaching out to their neighbors. Paul told us the names of our staff members he’s been working with: Rhonda, Lane, and Justin; and we know he’s in good hands.
Gray, the local pastor, was actually speaking at Paul’s church in Florida, and we watched him on a large screen like we do at NPCC since we sit in a second auditorium. We had our own, live worship team that morning. Gray was speaking on a topic we’ve heard Andy Stanley speak on, The Comparison Trap, but Gray did it his way with his own illustrations. It felt like home, and the greeters and people we met were so friendly and welcoming. Their handouts to new people include these tee-shirts! Rhonda, these pictures are for you!
We returned to this area on one of our 2021 quick trips and went back to church. This time the name was changed, but the friendliness was the same.
