- Church planting & multiplication
The backroads beauty of Massachusetts made Rocky Hedrick pull the car over on a road trip three years ago.
The sights on the way to a pastor’s retreat moved the Arkansas native’s heart, mind and will.
“I was so captivated by the beauty of my surroundings,” Hedrick thought. “I literally had to pull over on the side of the road.”
A few minutes of roadside reflection made God’s will plain for the former engineer.
“The Lord gave me a supernatural desire to call this place home,” Hedrick said. “There is a great need for the gospel to be on display here and to see peoples’ lives change with the love of Christ.”
Moses had his burning bush. God gave Rocky something similar on a Massachusetts backroad.
The vision for New England sounds like the vision for Arkansas
Hedrick, his wife and a core team launched a campus of Vox Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Easter 2022. That congregation is a part of Vox, a Converge Northeast church based in New Haven, Connecticut, that wants to make New England the most spiritually vibrant place in the world.
Related: Read Vox’s origins and see how much God’s done since the church started.
But Hedrick’s experience since his roadside revelation has often shown him there is plenty of need and lots of work. He arrived in Massachusetts to work for a golf ball manufacturer as an automation engineer.
“It was a dream come true,” he said of the job.
But God had done something only he could: the Vox in Hartford, where Hedrick first visited, had a very similar culture, values and vision to the engineer’s church back in Arkansas.
“It felt from the jump like this is home,” he said. “This is the language that I speak. This is what I grew up with.”
So, he started serving and joined a community group. Then he started dating Kirsten, his now-wife, and Vox leaders began mentoring him. Kirsten and Rocky helped launch another Vox campus in Springfield, Massachusetts, while he worked at the golf ball plant.
Then, Justin and Chrisy Kendrick, Vox’s founding pastors, asked the Hedricks to consider starting a campus in New England’s second-largest city. That would mean quitting the job he loved and starting a ministry in a city he’d never known.
A ministry grows in Worcester
In response, the two prayed and learned as much as they could by going to museums and visiting the city of 210,000 people.
They found Worcester, a deeply rooted city with an industrial manufacturing history, now has eight colleges and universities, plus many biotech and biopharma businesses. He said it is a city of education where people’s spiritual identity requires an emphasis on the mind.
“The city needs more gospel-centered churches,” he said. “The city needs more people to pursue Jesus here.”
Worcester’s identity now includes over 40,000 residents from around the globe, a striking contrast to its roots as a city founded by European pilgrims centuries ago.
Mary Xatse was born in Ghana but raised in Worcester. She left the city for a while, but three years ago, she returned home to help start the Vox campus. She said the church has the right culture for such a diverse city.
“You can be home here,” she said. “You can be part of something here that’s rooted in a foundation as solid as Christ.”
Related: Converge helps churches serve people from least-reached nations who live next door.
God has given Vox outreach opportunities and community partnerships, as well as Sunday worship services for adults and children. Community groups also meet during the week.
In addition, Vox members are spreading the knowledge of Jesus while filling backpacks with school supplies, volunteering in various tasks at a local school and donating Thanksgiving food to families. Vox believers recently handed out Bibles, prayed with folks and distributed hot food, groceries and clothing at a Day of Hope party put on by several churches.
“Let’s link arms together to help meet the needs,” Hedrick said. “Seeing what happened here in the days past was exciting to me, but also seeing what's happening currently in the city was also really special.”
Similarly, Xatse sees God creating a new hope in the city through his people.
“He’s doing amazing things in this community,” she said. “It’s incredible to see how much the Lord has moved.”
What he saw was nothing compared to what he could see
The sight of God at work hadn’t happened yet when Hedrick pulled off the road a few years ago. But now, he can’t forget the sights of rural Massachusetts.
The God who uses the church to change life now and forever has also shifted Hedrick’s life. In his native Arkansas, he was a college freshman when a local church really started to care about him. They left such an impression that he decided to make the faith his own.
When that supportive community and divine presence appeared again in his 20s at a Vox church, and then on a Massachusetts backroad, the Lord showed Hedrick more than the beauty of backroads. God drew Hedrick’s heart right into Christ’s mission so more people would glimpse what changed Hedrick’s life.
“There’s a church here that loves you,” he said. “We’re here to love you with the love of Jesus.”
Converge Northeast seeks to serve the church planters, churches and pastors in the Northeast by offering sources of connection and collaboration as well as resources that help people meet, know, and follow Jesus.
