OUR STORY

My wife Tayler and I have been missionally serving in ministry since we met 12 years ago. After a 5-year period of training at our home church, Epiphany Church of Gloucester City, NJ we felt called to help plant a new body of believers amongst the working class in Norfolk, VA.

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We uprooted our lives leaving family, long-time friends, and those who we helped bring to Jesus. We prayed that God would further use us to provide a family in Jesus for those who need a Christ-centered family to be a part of. We partnered with Little Creek Church in Norfolk, VA. (part of the Multiply Family of Churches) and began to train a core team on discipleship and evangelism in our living room in the Five Points section of Norview. We named our growing church plant “Five Points Church” to reflect the geographical aim of our mission. The adults from our core team began to take on leadership roles and committed to missionally helping launch this new church family in hopes of making more disciples and growing the Kingdom of God. Our small core team for Five Points Church began to form relationships with people from Five Points and the surrounding areas through five different outreaches in their first three months. The group in our living room began to fill up with new faces!

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We met very loving people from Rosemont Christian Church as we began to plan more outreach in our area. Rosemont was a highly historical, declining, 122-year-old church in South Norfolk/Portlock who had been praying for God to provide a new pastor to lead their church to reach deeper in the community. Rosemont members took notice of the work the Holy Spirit was doing through the Five Points core team and I was invited to preach there on July 30th 2023. I drove down Bainbridge Blvd (the street Rosemont is on) for the first time and felt the Holy Spirit place a burden on my heart. I preached a word on how God answers prayers (Eph. 3:14-21), though I didn’t know that God was in the midst of answering our prayers that very moment. After sharing about the heart of our Five Points church plant, Rosemont Christian Church, led by the Holy Spirit, offered the use of their building free of charge. They supported our core team financially, provided volunteers for our next outreach event, and even allowed us to hang signs outside their building. Rosemont needed help making new disciples of Jesus while our Five Points core team needed a home base for ministry as well as structural support for their growing church family.

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Through many different conversations, and lots of prayer and consideration, our Five Points Core team has felt led by the Holy Spirit to make Rosemont Christian Church our future physical location and the surrounding neighborhoods our missional focus. I am overjoyed to say that the Holy Spirit is merging us together for the sake of the Gospel - all because we share the same mission “to make disciples of Jesus, who become a family together, for the good of our community and beyond.” Only the Holy Spirit could bring together a small church plant core team with significant missional energy and a 122-year-old generational church with a positive reputation in the community.

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This church “merge” will provide extraordinary missional leverage to our community and surrounding areas and will help us provide a Christ-centered family to those who need it. Our Five Points core team has been able to bring new energy that enables them to relationally engage the working-class community, those who have been burned by the church, or those who are new to church altogether. As one church we have been able to help make contextual changes and updates that help us minister to our mission field, both culturally and generationally. The members of Rosemont have been helping our younger leaders from Five Points to run the ministry by adopting them and giving them the opportunities to do more ministry inside the building. Rosemont is providing a large support network for our leaders of Five Points in hopes of making more disciples.

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Currently, we are working together as ONE church family under the name and respected reputation of Rosemont Christian Church. Our mission and vision is the same as when we started and will remain the same for generations - to make disciples of Jesus, who become a family together, for the good of their community and beyond, in hopes of seeing a Gospel-Centered, multi-generational, multi-ethnic Church for families to fifind their identities upwards in Jesus, inward in the Church, and outward in their community! Praise God for the willingness of both the Five Points core team and Rosemont to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and use everything God has given for the benefit of the Gospel.

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We are praying that you will join our growing church family in updating facilities, blending our worship services, prioritizing outreach and youth programs, training more leadership from our community, and updating systems to support new believers and church members.

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In His Love,

Pastor Dylan Lebakken