About
About Pursuit Friends Church
Pursuit Friends is a new church plant in North Canton, Ohio that seeks to pursue God with abandon and passion. Our desire is to disciple people to take the light of Christ wherever they go, to be obedient to the Word of God, and to live in surrender to God’s will.
Pastor Brian Donahue
The Move of God
I grew up in a vibrant and exciting church setting where personal mission and calling were taught as a normal part of the Christian life. I loved church and all of the people in it. It was alive and passionate and felt like a family, like a true community that cared for each other and really lived life together.
Years later, my wife and I were a part of another church (a church plant) that had very much the same feel. There was an excitement and anticipation to be in that space with the people of God and those that were searching for answers to life. It was so alive and so life giving.
Ever since that life-changing experience, I have felt the calling of God upon my life to start a new work for the building of God’s kingdom, to disciple people into a deeper and richer relationship with Christ, and to equip people to take the gospel into their neighborhoods and places of influence. I’ve been resisting it, though.
To be honest, I had allowed fear of failure to keep me from actively pursuing a new work. I was hoping someone else would recognize this call and send me out, providing all the money, most of the resources, and even some people to accomplish this. God had other plans and was waiting for me to recognize my fear and to release it to Him as the One who really wanted to do the new work. This was not going to happen because of my talent, personality, knowledge or creative innovation. This new work was going to start with surrender.
My wife and I are in a place of surrender and obedience to the Father as we walk in obedience to His calling upon our lives to begin a new work for His kingdom. We don’t have all of the answers and we’re OK with that because God has simply asked us to step out in faith…to be faithful and to trust Him with this work He is asking us to step into.
Pursuit Church is the result of that faith and obedience. God has a given me a vision for a church community that seeks to pursue Him with abandon and passion. We seek to make disciples that are passionate about Jesus and obedient to His commands. We believe that God calls everyone to mission wherever they are and whatever they are doing, that their mission work is vital to the building of God’s kingdom whether they are planting a church, working in corporate America, serving coffee at Starbucks, raising a family, or serving in a ministry at a church.
We are all called to mission and expected to be raising up disciples of Jesus Christ who will, in turn, make more disciples so that this gospel can spread across the earth.
We are starting out in our home which has some space for initial growth and we’ll go from there as the Lord leads. The idea is that this church plant will grow organically as God blesses our obedience and faithfulness.
We also have a great core team of people that have also felt the call of God upon their lives to help us with this new work! I’ll have another article that will introduce them in the next update!
The core team will meet through the summer months worshiping and studying God’s Word together, attend a church planting boot camp, engage in team building, vision casting, planning and more! We hope to be ready for a launch in the spring.
If you would like to learn more about Pursuit Church and how you can partner with us as we start this new work, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].
In Christ,
Brian Donahue – Planter/Lead Pastor of Pursuit Church
JOIN US
Our Sunday gatherings include prayer time, worship, and teaching from God’s Word. Our kids discipleship time takes place during the service, and all together we enjoy a time of food and fellowship afterward!