CATC Sending | 2023

Sending

Our God is worthy to be worshipped by all peoples.  John Piper famously wrote that missions exist because worship doesn’t. We believe this wholeheartedly and have been overjoyed in this past year to see how God includes us in His mission to see Revelation 7:9 come true. 

The specific highlights from this past year are probably best to think about from an inside-out perspective (Or locally to domestically to globally.)

LOCALLY:
In the past 12 months, we have witnessed striking growth in many of our local ministries.  Our ESL ministry that’s hosted through our For Our City partnership now has well over 100 students enrolled with 40 or so volunteers serving faithfully each Sunday afternoon. In a similar way, our Foster and Adopt Connection support ministry has grown from around 100 people to an expected 175+ for this fall. We also want to celebrate that our CarePortal team of volunteers have met 39 different needs in the community totaling more than $30K worth of impact. 

DOMESTICALLY:
God continues to do marvelous things through our connection to ministry in Utah. King’s Cross Church opened its doors officially in March. That marks the second official church plant sent out from CATC…God is good and He is moving! We were excited to send two teams to help Austin and Monica Glenn as they launched King’s Cross this spring.  We had a team travel to Farmington in October to host an outreach event at Halloween. Whenever we take short-term trips, we are always hopeful that God might just be leading a team member to consider a long-term commitment to the ministry. God did just that in leading Sarah Reed to commit to moving to Farmington this past summer.  We were overjoyed to commission her in June and send her out a new member of King’s Cross. 

We also sent a team of students that faithfully served in helping the King’s Cross crew host their first VBS program in July. Austin was really encouraged to have our students helping KC reach their community’s children with the gospel. 

Finally, we were unexpectedly surprised (in the best way) to see 7 of our young adults travel to California over the summer to attend Radius International’s conference on world missions. They took the initiative on their own to take part in this conference on how the Church is to take part in God’s plan to reach all unreached people groups. 

GLOBALLY:
As a church, we intend to continue to increase our commitment to ministry among the least reached peoples in the world. We have established a couple of new partnerships in the past year to help us better accomplish this and expand our reach as a body. 

Middle East
First, we initiated a partnership with a family (identity not disclosed) that’s ministering to an unreached people group in the Middle East. Through Bible translation work, they are presenting the gospel to people who have never heard the name of Christ.

Sending Our Own

We also started supporting the ministry of one of our own, Carlee Taylor.  Carlee attended CATC in high school and recently graduated Texas A&M.  She is now serving full-time with a mission organization in College Station to help mobilize students to unreached locations around the globe. 

Japan

Over the summer months, we sent a team of 14 to Osaka, Japan. This trip was enlightening for all to be in the midst of the second-largest unreached people group on the globe. Less than 1% of Japanese people know and follow Jesus. We are excited to now have our students planning to travel back to Japan next summer to experience God’s heart for these unique people. 

Germany
Finally, we officially became the sending church for IMB missionaries to Hamburg, Germany.  Scott and Rachel Partridge began attending CATC during their last furlough home and approached our leadership about establishing a connection with CATC would be their official sending church.  We were happy to welcome them into membership and then send them out back to Hamburg over the summer! 

Our God is on a mission and he has been so gracious to include us in that mission! What a joy it is to celebrate what He is doing among us. 

Alpha | 2023

Seventh Round
We are gearing up to launch our 7th Alpha course in September and it’s been a wild, beautiful ride. Our church has engaged with people over the past few years that we would have never met apart from the intentionality of Alpha. The past two sessions of Alpha we hosted off-site at the Botanical Gardens in Grapevine and saw a significant growth in the number of skeptics and non-Christians. Last fall we had over 80 people attend our course and another 70 in the spring. We saw 10 people come to faith in Christ over the past year of Alpha and grew in maintaining connections with previous guests.

Dinner Party
We hosted an Alpha Reunion Dinner in February and invited all previous guests to attend. Darron Williams and a small band came out a performed a small concert for all our guests and we heard testimonies from two different Men who received Christ through Alpha. Brenton and Kyle both have written stories about the grace of Jesus they encountered through Alpha. Both men were rescued from suicidal ideation, depression, and self-hate by experiencing the love of God at Alpha. You can find both of those incredible stories on our Alpha website.

This September we moved our course to the Grapevine Rec Center to create space for growth. We’re praying the Lord would continue to draw people to us through Alpha and grow our Church’s culture of hospitality towards people far from God. Come join us!

CATC Young Adults | 2023

Young Adults

Multiplication
The Young Adults ministry at CATC has become something truly remarkable. At the turn of the year, the Lord began to multiply our group at a rate that caught us off guard at first. We began meeting together every other Thursday night and the size of our group doubled. We also hosted our 2nd annual Spring Retreat at Camp Copass in Denton and over 50 young adults spent the weekend together in God’s word, in worship, and growing in community.

Establishing Rhythms
In April, we established a team of young adult leaders that helped plan and champion the next 6 months of gatherings. We had a weekly summer gathering to meet the demands of our growth. We launched “Breakpoint” which is our key rhythm on the 2nd and 4th Thursday nights filled with worship, teaching, prayer, and small groups. We also packed out the summer with fun events like kayaking, pickleball, paintball, and a night out in the Ft. Worth Stockyards! Many of our gatherings grew to 60 and 70 young adults finding us from all over the DFW area through friends and social media.

This fall we have many young adults pursuing membership, connecting to life groups, and desiring to serve the Church so we look forward to continuing to watch all the Lord will do through this ministry!

CATC Students | 2023

Emerging Leaders

This has been an incredible year for our student ministry. We had a solid year in which we have had a great normal rhythm of Midweek and Student Life Groups throughout the year, but I want to

Summer Camps
Summer camps are always a top week for our students in the summer. This year, between middle school and high school, we took right at 100 students to camp. It was an incredible couple of weeks to see our students grow in their relationship with God and become a closer community with one another. A fun element we added this year was to have some high school students attend middle school camp as junior counselors. This allowed them the opportunity to be challenged in a new way and get to know our younger students better.

This summer we were able to offer a couple of different mission opportunities for our students. The first opportunity was serving a couple of Saturdays with Beautiful Feet ministries in Fort Worth. This ministry focuses on meeting the physical and spiritual needs of the homeless population in Fort Worth. Our students were able to sort clothes, serve meals, share their testimonies, lead worship, pray with people, and much more.

Our second opportunity this summer was to spend a week up in Utah working with Austin Glenn and King’s Cross. We took 19 students and 5 adults up to help host a VBS, canvas neighborhoods, prayer walk, offer babysitting for their staff for a night, learn about the Church of Latter-Day Saints, have conversations with Mormon missionaries in Temple Square, and much more.

Growing Intentionally

When it comes to intentional events (camp, One Weekend, mission trips) we see God use those times to stir a new work in the hearts of students in our ministry. This year, we have 8 students who are processing through what God may be calling them to as a life dedicated to serving the church in full-time vocational ministry or being a part of the work of taking the Gospel to unreached people groups.

This has been a great year for students growing in their relationship with God. One of the tangible ways that we can see that growth is through believers’ baptism. We were able to see 18 students come forward to make their decision to follow Jesus publicly before the church.

One Weekend and Fall Retreat were huge successes this year. During those two weekends, we saw over 150 students participate. At Fall Retreat our focus was on one of our church values, renewed as a community. We sought out together to answer the questions, What does an authentic community in the church look like?

When it came to One Weekend, we looked at the life of Elijah and how God provided for him in the big and small for what he needed in that moment. It was through God’s provision, that God’s name was glorified through His faithfulness to Elijah.

Emerging Leaders

An exciting new opportunity that was added this year was our student leadership team. This team was made up of 13 high school students who met twice a month with the CATC Student staff to plan events, help cast vision for the ministry, and learn what it means to serve those around them. This group leads out in student takeover nights (where they lead worship, share testimony, and plan the fun element without adult help), welcome team, sermon series planning, etc.

One of our greatest joys is to see students use their giftings to serve the church. We seek to build opportunities for students to try new things and lead out in their giftings. This year we were able to launch a student-led worship team for Wednesday nights. This allows the students the opportunity to grow in leading worship and their own personal worship with God. We have also been able to plug some of our students into serving on the production team on Sunday mornings. 

Support
None of the events or trips above happen without the incredible support of our church, adult volunteers, and families. The student ministry is growing and God is moving in the hearts of our students, and we cannot wait to see what He has in store for us in this next school year.

If you get excited about the idea of helping students encounter Jesus, please reach out to Nathaniel Kuhns as we are always looking for ways for adults to use their giftings and talents to help our students grow in their relationship with God.

CATC Students | 2022

Church at the Cross Students has had a full and incredible year. We have been able to get back into a rhythm of ministry that helps our students encounter Jesus. When it comes to working with middle and high school students, it is important to create unique and safe environments where students can ask hard questions, have conversations about the gospel and living a Spirit-filled life, and so much more.  

This year we were able to create some unique opportunities to have those conversations at One Weekend in February, middle school camp at Mt. Lebanon, high school camp in Glorieta, New Mexico, and a week at Beautiful Feet Ministries in Fort Worth serving the homeless population.  

We know that events are crucial, but it is just as important to create regular rhythms for students to be in community with one another. We currently have 12 life groups on Sunday mornings and a night of worship and fun on Wednesdays called Midweek. In these weekly programs, we have built in areas where students can serve the church by using their gifts and abilities. This past year we launched a student-led worship team and a Student Leadership Team that is made up of high school students. 

An area of ministry that we are going to focus on this upcoming school year is our ministry to our parents. Parenting teens in today’s culture takes a community. We want to invest more into our parents by creating resources and seminars to help our parents be better equipped to lead their families and students well. 

CATC Young Adults and Alpha | 2022

CATC YOUNG ADULTS

The Young Adults Ministry had an incredible last year together. We've spent many Thursday nights together in God's word, over dinner, and in prayer. We've done lots of fun events like Halloween parties, morning hikes, service projects in the community, worship nights, volleyball tournaments, and our first Young Adults Retreat in Downtown Ft. Worth.

This summer the Young Adults took a mission trip to Tijuana learning from cross-cultural missionaries and considered using their single years for the Kingdom. We met every week over the summer and saw a consistent increase in our gatherings of different college students, post-graduates, or young professionals in our area who are looking for community and a serious place to grow in their faith.

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ALPHA

This past year the Alpha ministry has labored to create an intentionally hospitable and disarming environment for non-Christians to consider the person of Jesus, while also helping to catalyze our evangelistic culture at CATC.

We hosted Alpha for twenty weeks this past year and saw roughly 120 individuals participate in our course. Each course has increased the number of skeptics and unbelievers who have felt comfortable joining because a friend from CATC invited them. We think six people this past year came to a saving faith in Jesus through Alpha. Many others came to Alpha as a believer and grew tremendously in their faith. The types of critical conversations that are had at Alpha spark curiosity in everyone that either causes them to reconsider or to go on a search for answers. It has been a true blessing helping these people encounter Jesus.

CATC Life Groups | 2022

Life Groups at Church at the Cross have been a place for people to connect in the midst of chaotic times over the last two years. There has been a strong desire to come together and grow, rejoice, pray, fellowship, and serve in community. To keep up with the increased demand, we have trained 10 new leaders. The majority of these new leaders have stepped in as co-leaders to help support existing leaders and their growing groups. We’ve also started one new group. Many groups are becoming quite large and multiple new groups will need to be added over the course of the next year.

The CATC Life Groups ministry has also sought to grow in discipleship and evangelism over the last year. Life Group Leaders have been meeting in small groups of 3-5 to share what they’ve learned that could be helpful to one another in these areas. Currently, almost every Life Group has at least one Discipleship Group to offer. As members engage in Discipleship Groups, they are finding these groups helpful for connecting on a deeper level. One exciting way groups have focused on evangelism is through Front Yard Festivals. Over the last year, we saw about 20 festivals pop up throughout the community, providing opportunities for members to engage with their neighbors.

Community continues to be a place where people experience the power and presence of God and we trust that we will only increase in this coming year as many new members are added.

CATC Care | 2022

It is a privilege to serve in a church alongside people who care for one another so well. This year we walked with one another through another year enduring painful seasons of grief and suffering. In providing meals, manpower, and presence in times of need, our Life Group communities have provided care and support for one another well. We have seen the Spirit of God work miracles of deliverance and also miracles of preservation through these trials to the glory of God the Father. Thank you, church family, for joyfully entering into one another’s sufferings with God’s grace in Christ Jesus. As this year will bring more rain, let us be dependent on the Spirit of God to provide us with strength to be ready to give of ourselves to one another.

STEPS, our gospel-centered recovery ministry, and GriefShare our gospel centered support group to the grieving continue to provide safe, gracious environments for people to seek help and healing. STEPS is held in the Fall and GS in the Spring. People are encountering Jesus, growing in the grace to know him more clearly and growing in the freedom to love him more faithfully in their everyday lives. Sarah Reed has championed our STEPS ministry while Laura and Mike Heath have lead our GriefShare ministry well for the past several years.  They are to be commended for their faithful service. If you have gone through STEPS here or at another church and would like to be involved in this ministry, contact her at Sarah Reed. If you are interested in serving in our GriefShare group contact the Heaths.

Thank you for sharing this year through the Mercy Fund Offering (collected during Advent). Because of your generosity, we saw over $132,162 used significantly to bless people this year. This represents people in physical or emotional crisis. Those in need of solid Biblical Counseling, benevolence help, and people who are giving their lives through foster/adoption.

We are grateful to God for the consistent and faithful ministry of our deacons to our church and local community. As a matter of fact, we are encouraged to be voting on the addition of David Parish to this team at our September 25th members meeting. Whether in visiting, praying, and serving the sick, distributing benevolence, helping families facing the loss of a loved one, and ministering to widows and vulnerable in our body, our leaders are striving to shepherd our flock with love. One recent way this played out was seen in our deacons creating a “night shift” rotation that saw them sitting in the hospital through the night for 2 weeks with one of our members who was suffering greatly to enable their family to be able to go home and rest. Please pray for these leaders as they continue to seek the Lords counsel in caring well.

If you want to learn more about our Care ministry, or if you are interested in serving in this capacity, click on the link below.