Destiny Church in Twinsburg, Ohio, gathers for worship on the indoor soccer field of a sports complex called The Edge, with rows of folding chairs and a sound system carried on and off the turf each Sunday. When the congregation outgrew its previous space, pastor Calvin Brown felt led to do something different rather than raise funds for a conventional church building. After what the church describes as a series of remarkable events, The Edge — a facility well known in the town for decades — was purchased, and its name was kept so that local people would still recognise it.
Writing in the Christian and Missionary Alliance's Alliance Life magazine, Lorie Huneycutt frames the congregation's work through the four mission fields of Acts 1:8 — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth — read as a church's immediate circles of influence, its wider community, cross-cultural neighbours and global mission. Instead of "church planting", Destiny speaks of "faith communities", and its soccer and basketball programmes are counted among them. Because sports hold such a central place in family life, the church added a café with tables above the field, where parents can watch practice and build friendships with one another while their children train.
Christian coaches mentor children and teenagers week by week, and families of many cultures and religions — including Buddhist and Hindu households — come to the complex for its sports programmes, playing on the same turf where the church worships. A second strand targets seven school districts around Twinsburg that the church calls "The Seven": 40 schools and 27,000 school-aged children. Through an initiative named the Barnabas Project, Destiny aims to place ten young adults in cohorts over three years into those schools, to encourage students who already believe and equip them to reach their friends. "To give each of those students repeated opportunities to respond to the gospel before they graduate — that's the heart of Saturate Seven," Brown said.
Source: Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA USA) / Alliance Life — cmalliance.org
