SALISBURY — With a lot of roots in the community, Derrick and Roshonda Hawkins are seeking to plant a church in their native Salisbury with a launch of Jan. 21 at 11 a.m. as the first gathering at Salisbury High School.

Multiple generations on both sides of the couple have called Salisbury and nearby communities their home, and they are doing the same, along with their children. The couple has six children, the late Derrick A. Hawkins Jr., Da’Shawn, Labrica, Ronnette, Adarion and Jaylen.

“Family is very important for us,” Derrick said.

Both Roshonda and Derrick graduated from North Rowan High School; however, she noted that she started high school at Salisbury. She went on to attend Rowan-Cabarrus Community College and is currently working to earn her master’s degree in social work to become a therapist. Derrick went to St. Augustine’s College, now a university, in Raleigh.

It was when he was home for a summer break that they “had the opportunity to meet as friends” at Catawba College, Derrick noted, where she was working while attending school.

Sharing that he was going through a rough bout during that summer, Derrick said he had come back to “get my bearings and my footing.” It was during this time that Roshonda befriended him and was encouraging him simply as a friend, he added, and the two started going to church together. A few years later, their interest grew more serious, and they married in July 2007.

The pair each received the call to ministry at different times and seasons in their lives, she at the age of 19 and he at 12.

Roshonda shared that she was going through a dark time in her life and “feeling hopeless and ready to give up on life.”

Her sister invited her to attend a Bible study, and it was there that she gave her life to Christ.

“I began to cultivate my relationship with God and just began to grow and then that’s when I really began to answer that call to ministry,” she said.

She began working with children and youth and then with women.

“Now, here we are, ready to plant a church,” she shared with a big smile.

Remembering how he and his cousins used to play and dress up in graduation robes, he being the pastor and they the deacons, Derrick said one day they were running around playing.

“I felt something I hadn’t felt before,” Derrick said. “I felt the presence of God. I didn’t know how to explain it at that time, but I knew it was something different. I felt the warmth of peace.”

He also remembered running to share this experience with his grandmother.

At 12, Derrick said he gave his life to Christ, was baptized at his home church, Henderson Grove Baptist, and began serving at the church, singing in the choir, playing drums, serving on the usher board, any way he could serve, he did, he noted.

Later, he went through a season of rebellion, struggling with depression, but in college he said he “felt that tug again, God drawing me back to him.”

It was then that he and Roshonda met and they began to develop their call and he served in youth ministry and there were speaking engagements, but he never saw his becoming a pastor, just wanting to serve where they could.

“But God had other plans for our lives, so we are so happy that he did,” he said.

The couple went on to serve in various churches as Derrick said they were pastoring a church in Greensboro, which they did for five years, commuting there and then he was on staff with the Refuge Church in Kannapolis for seven and a half years, also commuting there, and Roshonda worked as an administrative assistant for him for a while at the church.

It was back in 2016, Derrick said, sharing the story of his time at The Refuge Church, pastored by Jay Stewart who mentored Derrick.

Stewart, he noted, took he and his wife in as family and taught him about pastoring and while he has a father in his life, he taught about fathering, he noted, showing “me a different side of what it meant to be a person of integrity and it wasn’t about race. It was just about me learning how to be a better pastor and teach and serve and that just kind of morphed into this whole relationship on unity amongst races.”

The Refuge, he continued, was a predominantly white church and The House of Refuge was a predominantly Black church, and “we merged our churches together.”

Derrick added that at that time they were getting national attention on this and the story appeared in multiple publications and he and Pastor Stewart co-authored a book entitled “Welded Forming Racial Bonds that Last.”

This book, as noted on the book’s back cover “is the story of two pastors and two churches coming together in the middle of some of the nation’s greatest racial tensions and painting a picture of true biblical community. It recounts the two-year journey leading up to the merger of an African-American church with a large, multi-site primarily white megachurch.”

The Refuge Church had two campuses, he noted, and the Salisbury one closed down, “and some of them were white, and they entrusted us to be pastors to them. And we began to start attracting other people of different diversities.

“The kingdom of heaven is multiethnic, it’s multicultural so why shouldn’t our churches reflect that and I don’t believe it should not be out of the norm for us to experience heaven on earth every single Sunday morning,” Derrick shared.

To them, multiethnic doesn’t just mean Black and white people attending church together, but he said, “it’s an appreciation of the value of what each ethnicity brings to the church and what they bring into our lives.”

Derrick noted how while helping at The Refuge Church he felt called to come back and “felt like God was calling us to plant a church, but didn’t know it was supposed to be in our hometown.”

Two people, it was noted, helped them to even consider Salisbury as that location, one being a visit to their home by Angela Williams, CEO of United Way Worldwide who “encouraged us to consider planting in Salisbury so that was something we didn’t see coming,” he said.

The other was his grandmother, Betty McNeely, who he shared was a big part of why they are here. He recalled that his grandmother, who died recently, was a member of Henderson Grove Baptist Church for 50 years, and “wanted me to be back in my hometown. She just didn’t understand why we were going all that distance and couldn’t find a church in our own hometown.”

The couple knew they were supposed to start a church, but just didn’t know it would be in their hometown.

“God has been amazing” he noted, in getting them back home to share the gospel right here where they were born.

Previously serving as a safety attendant on the behavior health floor at Novant, Roshanda said she saw so many dealing with depression and the feelings of hopelessness and how God was providing her with opportunities to pray with them and offer encouragement, and this began to prick her heart, she shared.

Therefore, she continued, “with Salisbury, we can relate because we’ve been through it. We can be the example of ‘just because you go through it, it doesn’t define who you are and you can come out. Jesus is the hope of the world And so I think our lives can portray that hope, all that we’ve experienced, but it was Jesus that came and brought us hope and pulled us out, and so just being an example to others.”

This multiethnic church plant, which will be called Promise City Church, with its name taken from the book of Joshua where he led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Derrick said God gave him this name as he was reading and praying. 

“We believe that this place is an opportunity for the promises of God to be revealed over a city and over a people. And so that name came from God. I can’t even take credit for being that creative to get it,” he shared.

The new church plant will be meeting Sundays at 11 a.m. at Salisbury High School, 500 Lincolnton Road. Being able to meet at the school came about after reaching out to Principal Marvin Moore, Derrick said, who was willing to have a conversation with him. 

We are ARC, Association of Related Churches, known to plant churches all around the world and “promotes partnering with your local city, city officials and school and building a partnership,” therefore he contacted Moore. And after all praying about it, Moore told him he “felt it was the right thing to do and it would be a good fit.”

In addition to ARC, the couple is also being sent out from their home church, Refuge Church, to come and help plant this church in Salisbury. 

Derrick shared that according to statistics, 53.3 percent of the city of Salisbury is unaffiliated with a church, and therefore, they want to help do their part.

Noting that there are many other great churches in the area, he said, “we just want to come and lock arms with other churches in this community, share the people they are pastoring and leading. But we also want to give the opportunity for our hometown to learn who we are as we are serving them in a way that God is calling us to serve. “

To let the community know of the church plant, they have been canvassing the community, doing what they “naturally do, just going out pastoring and loving on people, and it’s not hard to love on people when half of the city is looking for something,” he said.

For the past few years, Derrick continued, they have been praying and “getting on fire for this city because it’s different living in a place and then pastoring a place.”

Many people are struggling, but there’s also transformation taking place in Salisbury, and hope, he added.

“We believe that transformation and hope is already here and we just need to cultivate that spirit,” he said.

When asked what they hope to see happen in and around the city as a result, the one word answer was partnership.

“We want to see what is already beginning to happen in Salisbury, that it will become vibrant again,” Derrick said. “That there’s a life-giving church that partners with other life-giving churches to bring hope in our city. That is our hope.”

While Derrick mentioned that Promise Church might not be the church for each person, he did say “that doesn’t mean the kingdom is not for you” and thus they want to “serve as a bridge to connect people with other churches” in the area and help people be engaged in the community and they want to be a part of the community and be seen as salt in it and “not just be a building that you come to on Sunday.”

Roshonda added that she would like to see Salisbury and surrounding areas to be the “means to a revival and an example to other regions, to be an example of the unity of God and what that really looks like.”

So the first meeting will be on Jan. 21 with just the one morning service that day and “we can’t wait to see people there,” Derrick shared.