Sunday November 22nd was our last service. We are closing Crossmark because God has done what he has wanted to do in us.

This has been made evident to us in several ways. The families in our core group just haven’t been able to give it the priority it needs to plant a stable growing church. Pastor Will and Olivia’s second child is due and will be born any day. Our other pastor has his fourth child coming in Dec/Jan. The church has had people with different health issues that haven’t been the best. None of these are bad things. They are just where God has us in life.

We want to be clear. There was no sin involved, no personality issues, and nothing that was leading us to having to close the church. We just felt as a core group it was time to close because we just weren’t accomplishing the original mission that we wanted to do. We wanted to plant a church that non-Christians would want to and would come to. We wanted to plant a church where nominal Christians would desire and allow God to work in them to become phenomenal Christians. We wanted to be a church that made Jesus known better.

We weren’t meeting that goal. If a church isn’t meeting its goal then it should evaluate its effectiveness in fulfilling its purpose. We attracted some who just wanted to attend a new church. We had a few church hoppers and visitors and they were always welcome and came regularly. We were and are thankful for them and their sojourn with us.

Our goal though was to plant a church that reached a community for Christ. We weren’t doing that and decided it would be wiser to step back and re-evaluate how best to do it. Our pastors evaluated their lives and consulted their spouses and chose to focus on building their families before attempting to build another church or continue a church that wasn’t meeting its goals.

We rejoice that in our time together we have seen marriages saved, nominal believers chase after the phenomenal God, families reunited, a man called and dedicated to pastoral ministry, children dedicated to God, and the name of God being magnified.

We look forward to seeing what God will do from the fruit of our labors. We believe God is going to something awesome in all our futures.

Thanks and God bless for all those who supported us. Be in prayer as we continue to chase after God. Pray for our families and pastors to move to where God will have us. Pray that the work God began with Crossmark will go on until the Kingdom of God comes into this present age. Pray that God will continue to call people to live lives marked by the cross of Christ.

On behalf of my family and what was the Crossmark family may God richly bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you. May he be gracious to you. May the Lord’s name be upon you.

Sincerely,
Will Adair
lead pastor/church planter of Crossmark

Sorry We are Closed for Service

Come learn how God turns our failures into his successes and changes us along the way.

We appreciate your help.

Juliet Capulet speaking to Romeo Montague in Shakespeare’s tragic love story tells him there is much more to something than just its name. Juliet tells Romeo that a name is only a descriptor of the true being. Juliet says this because she loves Romeo a “Montague” who are the enemies of her family the Capulets. She professes her love in spite of him being named a Montague. Romeo in his passion for Juliet rejects his family name and vows to “deny (his) father” and be “new baptized” as Juliet’s lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play. It also sets the stage for how we think of our church name Crossmark.

Have you ever asked why churches have names? Originally churches were simply named after the city that they existed in. The Church of Jerusalem, Thessalonia, Galatia, or Rome. After the Reformation churches took names that pronounced their doctrinal allegiance such as St. John’s Catholic Church. Wars broke out in the Church and for centuries doctrinal disagreements some major and others minor became the central dividing issue between many churches. Churches took names to distinguish themselves from other Christians. In our day people know very little of Christian doctrine, teaching, and especially very little of Christian history. The divisions to most non-Christians seem pointless. Many Christians see the divisions as pointless as well.

To be sure some division are important. Some so called churches even change the meaning of the gospel thus confusing the world of who is rightly proclaiming the identity of Jesus. Names are only as important as what they reflect. When our pastor was searching for our name he desired not to be identified as just “another church” instead he wanted to be identified with being from the real Jesus. We believe God gave us the name Crossmarkas another way to identify with the real Jesus. The story of the crossmark comes from God working in the lives of a nation on the verge of total moral, social, and political collapse. Yet God was at work. God promised that He would redeem those who believed in him. In the story God sends his faithful messenger to put a cross mark on the heads of all those who believed God’s promises (Ezekiel 9:3-4, John 15:16). We believe this messenger was Jesus. We believe this story foreshadows what Jesus came to do in his life particularly his work on the cross. We call ourselves Crossmark to identify with Jesus in whom we put our hope for the best possible life now and in the world to come.

Juliet raises a valid question though. What is in a name? We agree that Juliet had it right when she observes that a simple name change does not define a being. We know that we are not defined so much by Crossmark as we are defined by the Church. People have heard of the Church. Most people probably haven’t heard of Crossmark. The Church doesn’t often reflect the image of transformation by Jesus in the world in which we live. People see the Church as something that is to political, irrelevant, prideful, mean-spirited, self-centered, shallow, rigid, and unthoughtful. Some even label the Church as unChristian! Sometimes these criticisms are valid. We at Crossmark know that we can’t change the image of the entire Church. We aren’t even going to try. That’s not our job. God in his wisdom collectively called a group of people called the Church as his chosen group to reveal himself to all the peoples of the world.

Romeo was willing to forsake whatever name he had been given before so that he could be identified with her. He was willing to forsake everything just to be known as hers. She wisely corrected him that he would still be her Romeo no matter what his name reflected. We believe the true Church no matter what its name reflects to others shows the world the reality of Jesus at work in their lives. This is why we identify ourselves with what Jesus has done. The name Crossmark Church represents our hope in God to reach sinners like us and bring them into the true Church by making the real Jesus known.

On Earth there are two types of churches. There are true ones and false ones. They are both made up of sinners. The difference is that true churches are being reformed by God where false churches are being reformed by the values of a fallen world. We believe that the true Church best reflects the real Jesus as it lives and interacts in local communities. True churches are daily working on knowing God more intimately through Jesus and making him known. That is our job and we hope we will do it well. We will at times fail. We will repent of that and persevere. Come see if we live up to our name. Hold us accountable. See if our name fits.