The pics are pretty cool, right?
The flannel-clad couple with the 2.5 kids living in Northern Virginia and continuing the work of planting a church that, for all intents and purposes, has been successful in the region and is now seven years strong.
But the pictures never tell the full story. There is a blend of grit, grief, and grace mixed into every year that's passed since the planting of Impact Church, and it goes back even further than the launch on September 21, 2012.
We're so grateful you decided to drop into our corner of cyberspace to not only learn more about our story, but let God use the lessons He continues to teach us, and the journey He continues to lead us through, to be a source of peace, solidarity, comfort, healing, learning, challenge, and equipping for you, your spouse, your family, and your team.
This is my (Ellen's) side of the story: when the calling all began and how God utterly changed the direction of my life to become something I could never have imagined on my own. I hope you see Christ glorified, and know that He can and will do the same for you.
Ellen:
I came to DC less than a week after I graduated college, because I'm an over-achieving planner who already had the job, living arrangements, and budget lined up for my shiny new life as an adult. I was too prideful to move home after graduation, plus DC seemed fun and a comfortable distance from where I grew up (Hampton Roads, Virginia, about three hours away). My job was entry-level but had that potential for growth that everyone talks about. To summarize: absolutely zero spiritual reasons or even thought went into the move here. It was purely motivated by ... ambition? A desire to prove something? Needing a change? Yes, to all of the above.
I grew up in a Christian home, but didn't have a personal relationship with the Lord until I was 18. It was then that I understood I couldn't earn God's love and no amount of apologizing to Him for straddling the metaphorical fence was going to win my way into heaven. I grew slowly in college but even then, I struggled in my understanding of His grace that Jesus was not constantly needing to be appeased. My whole life was filled with people-pleasing; I always seemed to be the uncool kid fighting my way into the cool kids' circle. Obviously, this led to self-esteem issues, and in high school, I got duped by cultural and societal pressures and lies. I carried these temptations and struggles into my relationship with God. In college, I felt called to do something more with my life than live the typical American Dream, but I didn't know what that 'more' was. I flirted with mission trips and even went on a few to Newark, NJ, throughout my time in school, but never got the courage to step out of my comfort zone. With this attitude of not knowing what God wanted from me and simultaneously trying to impress everyone else, I graduated from college with all the right recommendations and checked boxes and moved to Arlington for a job in DC.
When I moved, I was in a relationship built around sin and selfishness that I chose to hang onto for the sake of security. I felt like I knew where it was going, and that made me feel like I had some control over my life. Control, or at least the appearance of control, was an idol to whom I sacrificed so much up until that point in my life, often choosing it over God's best for me.
After moving to DC, I got sucked into the world of climbing the ladder, and felt like I could never be good enough at work. I obsessed over what was missing. I lost sleep looking at masters degree programs, certifications I needed in order to advance, and on the days I felt like giving up, job openings anywhere in the country or even moving back to Hampton. I was lonely in DC, but this loneliness wasn't something that I could fill with friends; I had friends but they went home at the end of the night and obsessed over the same things I did. No one was giving anyone any hope, and it was an isolating, helpless feeling. I had no clue how to fix it.
Unfulfillment led me to find community anywhere that felt familiar. That community, for me, was found in a local southern baptist church in Manassas.
I walked in one Sunday and there was this guy preaching who looked really young, but his heart for the Lord, his passion, and his confidence and maturity demanded the respect of young and old alike. I thought he was the senior pastor until I learned a while later that he was actually the youth pastor who, along with the worship and administrative pastor, was leading the church together since the former senior pastor had recently left. But this guy was the one who preached the most, and assumed leadership in the vacuums to the point that a visitor like myself had no clue he wasn't the main guy.
(Spoiler: it was Brandon.)
I kept coming back because I'd grown up in this type of church environment and it felt safe when everything else in DC felt scary. I got to meet Brandon, grab coffee with him, and hear his heart to make disciples out of students who would change Northern Virginia, DC, and the world. Did I want in on that?
...I mean, you can't say "no," right?
Thus began the journey of God shifting everything in my "controlled" little world. I started asking hard questions that, at first, I shoved away - Is my lifestyle honoring to the Lord? Is my relationship honoring to God, or self-serving? Am I using my time in DC to make much of Christ, or have I actually, in all this time, been focused on all the wrong things? These were humbling questions that chipped away at what I thought was my identity, but in actuality was my idol of pride and the appearance that I was self-sufficient.

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