Jodi and Heath Caddell and their children (pictured above; click to enlarge the photo)
“This
is the last thing I would ever have thought I’d be doing,” says Heath Caddell about planting a church. “I
thought I’d be always a church youth guy.”
Caddell,
age 36, a Moore County, N.C., native, recently served as a fulltime youth
pastor at Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C. He holds a B.S. degree in
elementary education and is studying with Grace College of Divinity for a
bachelor of divinity degree. He and his wife, Jodi, now work at planting a
church in Leland, N.C., part of the Wilmington metropolitan area. Grace Church
plans to provide some financial support to the Caddells until January 2015.
“Grace
Church is our ‘sending church,’ supporting us monthly by raising funds in its
congregation,” he says.
The
Caddells sold their Moore County home and moved to Leland, but they meet
periodically at Grace Church with “core” families who plan to relocate to
Leland and help establish a church. The Caddells have three children: Lydia, 9;
Noah, 8; and Allie, 3.
“Ten
families plan to move with us,” Caddell says. “Most are moving this summer. Our
launch date to be in a school, storefront or some kind of building is September
9, 2012. We plan to conduct four ‘practice services’ during August 2012. I will
be the lead pastor. Our church’s name is Reach Community Church.”
Thinking about Church
Planting
Caddell
says he approached the Rev. Randy Thornton, Grace Church’s senior pastor, in
2009 and said, “Jodi and I have been talking. We feel we might plant a church,
sometime.”
Thornton
advised them to wait and see what developed. Caddell put the thought “on the
shelf.”
Grace
Churches International (now called “mPact Churches”; www.mpactchurches.org)
held a 3-day March 2010 conference in Wilmington, N.C. Caddell and his wife
attended. Caddell says Clem Farris, a GCI-affiliated minister from Chapel Hill,
N.C., stood at a meeting on the first day of that conference and said, “I feel
God’s calling someone to start a church in Wilmington.”
Caddell
says he grew up vacationing at South Carolina beaches and that he and Jodi are
preferably “mountain people.” (They met at Appalachian State University in
Boone, N.C.)
“Wilmington
wasn’t foremost in my thoughts as a place to live,” he says.
On
the second day of the conference, a speaker said he felt God had spoken to some
young men in the room “about future things, but you have gotten comfortable
where you are.”
“Jodie
and I walked out feeling he was talking about us,” Caddell says.
The
next morning, Caddell was one of about 20 people attending a meeting concerning
church planting. He signed up for an “assessment interview,” which later took
six hours at one sitting. That discussion involved 13 subjects, including
personal evangelism and conflict resolution.
Caddell
says that interview involved this philosophy: “What you did in the past
predicts what you do in the future.”
He
adds, “You don’t plant a church where you think you should. You plant it where
you’re called. I spent four or five months asking, ‘Where?’ Wilmington kept coming
to mind. I’d see UNC-Wilmington bumper stickers.”
Trip to the Beach
On
July 1, 2010, Jodi, his then-8-year-old daughter Lydia and he drove to
Wilmington to pray and stay one night in a motel.
“I
had the idea the clouds were going to part [and provide an answer to his
calling],” Caddell says. “It rained all night. We could not ‘prayer walk.’ I
felt spiritual oppression.”
They
drove to Wrightsville Beach the next morning, after the rain had stopped.
“We
were all three walking independently and praying,” he says. “I was really kind
of frustrated and whining. God seemed to say to me, ‘I brought you here.’ He
was getting me to calm down, so I could listen. I said to God, ‘If I need to
come here, I need to know.’ Then I heard a strong inward voice – the strongest
I’ve heard in the 17 years since I’ve been saved – say to me, ‘This is what I
created you for.’”
As
the three family members returned to their car, Caddell asked his wife, “What’d
you feel?”
“Nothing,”
Jodi said.
She
mentioned, however, that a song kept returning to her mind while she prayed.
“But
she sloughed it off,” Caddell says. “That song was a Kenny Loggins song called
‘This Is It.’ I felt that was a bit of a confirmation.”
Almost
a month later, during an “arts night” of worship and prayer at Grace Church,
Jodi watched Amy Smith of Aberdeen begin to paint on a large blank canvas.
“Have
her paint a beach scene,” Jodi prayed.
Smith
painted a bird flying above an ocean wave and lettered this slogan below the
wave depicted on the canvas: “The Spirit of the Lord dwells here.”
Noting
that church planting is not easy and does not always work as it seems it
should, Caddell refers to Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God
works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose.”
Leland, North Carolina
Caddell
talks about Leland, N.C.
“Leland
is a town in Brunswick County, N.C., and is part of the “Wilmington
Metropolitan Area,” he says.
A
port city, Wilmington was settled on the Cape Fear River and is the county seat
of New Hanover County, N.C.
“We
looked for a location in Wilmington,” Caddell says, “but growth is to the north
and west of that area – west is where Leland is. We’re only four miles from
downtown Wilmington.”
Over
100,000 people reside in Brunswick County, and over 180,000 live in New Hanover
County. Caddell says there are 18,000 people within a 5-mile radius from the
location where he plans to plant a church.
“In
the last 20 years, that area has grown 106 percent,” he says. “That’s in only the
5-mile demographic. In the Leland-Belville area, there are lots of families –
very suburb-ish.”
Preparing for Ministry
Caddell
talks about his preparation for ministry.
“I
was ‘saved’ at age 18 at a Young Life camp in Saranac, N.Y.,” he says.
He
had attended regularly at Culdee Presbyterian Church in West End, N.C., but
says, “I had the facts in my brain but no relationship with Jesus.”
After
graduation from Pinecrest High School in 1994, Caddell studied for two years at
Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, N.C.
David
Page of Young Life mentored him in his Christian Faith. Page and his wife,
Wendy, now live in Greensboro, N.C.
Caddell
enrolled at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and met his
then-wife-to-be, Jodi Hamilton, on his third day at school. She was studying
business. They became engaged nine months later and married six months after
that engagement. They attended Banner Elk Christian Fellowship in Boone.
After
he earned a B.S. in elementary education, the couple lived for six months in
Ashville, N.C., where Caddell worked as a salesman at Auto advantage. Jodi
worked at a “The Gap” store.
They
moved to Moore County, N.C., and tried various churches for four Sundays.
“One
day I opened the phone book, looking for a church,” Caddell says. “I saw the
name ‘Grace Church.’ We visited and never left. I volunteered to help with the
youth group about a year after we came to Grace. Jimmy Currence was the youth
pastor.”
Before
working as a fulltime Grace Church youth pastor, Caddell served as a part-time
youth director for the church from 2002 to January 2008.
“For
the first six years as youth pastor, I worked 50 hours per week for four and a
half years at McDonald Brothers (a distributor of building supplies) and three
and a half at Cisco Industrial Supply” he says. His wife worked as a homemaker.
Seeing God’s Hand
Caddell
says he learned a lot from youth ministry.
“It’s
the individual who matters more than the group,” he says. “You constantly have
hurting teenagers, and it brings you back to the fact that ministry is really
about a relationship with each person.”
“Around
years four to six during that bi-vocational time, I almost quit the ministry,”
he says. “I’ve learned that it’s my work to do what God’s called me to do, and
it’s God’s job to do what he’s going to do. For a season, I felt I needed to be
God for people. It’s the Holy Spirit who does the work. We only have a part in
their lives.”
For
about the first year after he became a Christian at age 18, Caddell wanted to
become a minister, he says.
“I
can see God’s hand from the beginning, building me for where I’m going to be,”
Caddell says. “I’m most excited about the faith that planting a church is going
to require of me. I have the opportunity to see the greatest moves of God in my
new adventure.”
Jodi and Heath Caddell (pictured above in 2012)
