Being a CPK

By Joshua Hampton

In 1998, my dad walked into my bedroom and told me we were moving to Clarksville, Tennessee, to plant a new church. As a 12-year-old boy, this news was devastating. I couldn’t believe my dad was going to uproot us from our home, church, and friends to start a new church. I remember sitting on my bed thinking, “I would never do this to my kids.”

During the next two years on the road raising money, my disdain only grew. When we began holding services in the year 2000, I honestly felt more like a pack mule than anything else. We met in a conference room at the Wingate Inn in Clarksville, Tennessee. We set up the room and tore it back down every Sunday. This got old after the first week!

In July 2000, at the National Convention in Anaheim, California, things began to change for me. During the Tuesday night teen service, I went to the altar, where Patrick McDaniel prayed with me. That night, I answered the call to preach. I would love to say I went home and loved being a CPK from that moment forward, but that would be a lie. While my desire to pursue God grew, my desire to be a pack mule was still non-existent.

One Saturday each month, the Clarksville Church met at 10:00 a.m. and went door-to-door distributing flyers with our church information. The goal was to pass out 1,500 flyers and then go out to eat. These were good times, even for a reluctant pack mule. But what was never any fun was doing this once or twice a week when it was just me, my brother, and my dad. He always tried to bribe us with a trip to Pizza Hut or, if we were really lucky, a trip for steak. As a teenage boy, there were a hundred other places I wanted to be, but I had no choice. I was a CPK handing out flyers with my dad, sometimes being cursed at, and occasionally chased by dogs.

The one thing I hated more than passing out flyers was—week after week after week—driving through subdivisions in Clarksville counting houses and praying over neighborhoods. Dad would say, “Hey! Let’s run to Walmart.” The next thing I knew, we are driving through subdivisions. He would say, “You count your side, and I will count mine.” We would write down the number of houses on each street and then move to the next. The whole time I could hear my dad praying over each home and every door hanger left there in the future.

As a teenager, I just wanted to get home to be with my friends and play basketball or baseball. I thought my dad was so inconsiderate to keep me from my friends. On multiple occasions, I remember thinking I would never go anywhere to plant a church; it was way too hard.

Fast forward to 2016. Once again, I found myself in the car with my dad and my brother. At this point in my life, I had been in ministry for several years, and strangely enough, felt God calling me into church planting. Driving across Missouri, on the way to the National Convention in Kansas City, I looked over at my dad and said, “Let’s plant a church together.”

Dad got a really good laugh out of that and told me I was crazy. I continued to talk, assuring him I was serious. I told him my wife and I felt called to plant a church in the Northwest, and we should do it together. It was the first of many conversations over the better part of two years before my parents, too, felt God’s call.

Today, I am doing exactly what I said I would never do! Together with my parents, my wife Kim and I and our own church planters’ kids are starting the Summit Church in Missoula, Montana. Regular services launched in March. At Summit Church, we tell visitors faith is a process, a journey. I smile as I look back at my life as a CPK and know I have come full circle.

About the Writer: Josh Hampton is co-pastor of Summit Church in Missoula, Montana. Learn more: summitmissoula.com or fwbnam.com.