When Brian Beasley said yes to a vision trip, he didn’t expect it would lead to planting Growing Faith Church in Liberty, N.C. But God was writing a bigger story — one that reshaped a church's vision for multiplication and raised up new leaders along the way.

“I think I’m going to Thailand.”

Growing Faith Church in Liberty, N.C., launched this spring, but for church planter Brian Beasley and sending church Pleasant Garden Baptist, a Sunday morning conversation six years ago sparked the series of steps toward multiplication. 

Beasley has practiced law for almost 30 years and plans to retire next fall. One weekend in 2019, he started thinking about what he might want to do after his career as an attorney and considered going to seminary. His wife, Jeana, nudged him toward “stepping out of his comfort zone.”

The next morning Beasley ran into Robert Hefner, pastor at Pleasant Garden Baptist Church. A spot had opened up on a vision trip to Thailand, and Hefner asked him to pray about who he could invite to join. 

Beasley sensed that he should take the spot. He found Jeana in the sanctuary and sat next to her, with a look on his face that told her something was up.

So Beasley went to Thailand, where he discerned God confirming a call to seminary. In 2020, he started online classes through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and earned a master’s degree in pastoral ministry. Soon after completing course work, Beasley joined another mission trip to western Ukraine. This time, God called him to lead a church. 

“I still really wasn’t thinking about planting; I was just thinking about interviewing for an established church somewhere,” Beasley said. 

But after more prayer and conversations with Hefner, the Beasleys sensed the Lord directing them toward church planting. 

It was during that time that they started connecting with more people from Liberty, N.C., not far from where the family lived. Toyota was building a new battery plant in the small town.

“We knew that it was going to grow quite a bit over the next five years,” Beasley said. “So we felt like God was leading us — if we were going to plant — that we would plant in Liberty.”

Hefner and other pastors at Pleasant Garden were also thinking about how they could minister to their neighbors in the growing Liberty area.

“The Lord was working that out to combine my calling and what they were feeling He was asking them to do in ministry as well,” Beasley said. 

Open doors shift direction of ministry

When Robert Hefner, who currently serves as president of the N.C. Baptist board of directors, came to Pleasant Garden in August 2018, it soon became clear to him that God was working in the church to prayerfully raise up and send out ministry leaders. 

“I really wasn’t sure what that would or should look like,” Hefner said.

The team that took the vision trip to Thailand in 2019 explored a missions partnership possibility. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, it disrupted that momentum.

“But it also was really eye-opening for what God began to do in Brian,” he said. “God started calling Brian toward ministry.”

As Beasley progressed through seminary over the next couple of years, Hefner grew more curious about the SendNC church-planting partnership between N.C. Baptists and the North American Mission Board that launched in September 2022. In conversations with Beasley, he asked if he had ever considered church planting. 

“That simple conversation really started opening up a lot of doors and next steps for us,” Hefner said.

They reached out to Mike Pittman, SendNC director, and started walking through the process to plant. Beasley completed the SendNC assessment and then training with a cohort of other planters before becoming endorsed as a SendNC planter.

The SendNC team walked with them through every step. 

“The partnership between N.C. Baptists and North American Mission Board through SendNC is such a good, healthy way of preparing churches to become sending churches and preparing church planters to go out and plant,” Hefner said.

Beasley started gathering a team early last year and held their first training with the core team of 13 on April 4, 2024. Since then, the team served in Liberty when they could. Pleasant Garden commissioned the church plant this January. Growing Faith held preview services, then officially launched March 2. They celebrated six baptisms that Sunday.

Sending leaders, raising up leaders

The season of sending taught the people of Pleasant Garden about multiplication as “God’s kingdom math for reaching the world,” Hefner said.

From navigating details of building out an administrative structure and financial support to developing a core team and preparing families for a new experience of going out as a launch team, sending has shifted the heart and shape of ministry at Pleasant Garden. 

“It’s brand new language and really brand new territory for us to move from ‘How do we get bigger as a church?’ to ‘How do we multiply as a church?’” said Hefner.

The Beasley family were members at Pleasant Garden for about 15 years before planting Growing Faith. Brian had served as a deacon, taught Sunday school and led small groups. Both he and Jeana led worship. Their absence created a visible vacuum that required worship leaders to identify who could step into those roles next. 

More spaces opened up.

A deacon and his wife joined the Growing Faith launch team, and so did two other families who actively led in the children’s ministry. 

“The most impactful piece of this has been the visibility of us losing people in leadership in a few different areas,” Hefner said. “And our church watching God raise up, prepare, send out and then create the voids where other people can slide into.”

Pleasant Garden’s pastors and leaders asked themselves, “How do we keep shifting to developing leaders that God may very well prepare for leadership roles in our church, or that He may prepare for leadership roles in a revitalization or a church plant or a call to ministry down the road?”

“The church plant kind of forced that, maybe hit fast forward … and it’s pulling us into the direction of developing leaders rather than just growing ministries,” Hefner said.

As Pleasant Garden raises up new leaders, they’re continuing to support the plant in Liberty. They’ve committed a portion of their budget to help Growing Faith throughout at least their first year. Multiple groups from Pleasant Garden participated in the preview services earlier this year and help with setting up on Sundays. One couple committed to help with the plant for at least three months while praying about their timeline.

“As often as we can, we’re celebrating what God’s doing there,” Hefner said. “We’re trying to keep those conversation points in front of our church family too — for familiarity, for celebration, and also for us trying to create an interest, an eagerness, a prayerfulness about what we’ll do next in sending.”

Today Growing Faith is gearing up for a full summer, including community events to reach their neighbors. A few local families have connected with small groups.

“We’re excited about what He’s doing,” Beasley said. “We’re patiently waiting for Him to bring who He wants to bring.”

“If we’re willing to make ourselves available to God, He’s going to use us in ways that will surpass our imagination,” he said.

Hefner and Beasley look to Jesus’ model of pouring Himself into 12 disciples to reach the world. 

“His kingdom method of reaching the world was to multiply leaders and send them out,” Hefner said. “I hope and pray we embrace, we commit to and we trust the Lord to empower our church to continually multiply.”

By Liz Tablazon, N.C. Baptist Contributing Writer