Every plant begins with a seed. Courtyard Church (Tulsa, OK) began four years ago as a dream in the heart of Melissa Smith. Through her prayers and the prayers of her family, this seed was nurtured and began to grow. Rachelle Nelson, wife of Courtyard’s preaching pastor, Todd Nelson, shares her thoughts about how this church plant began as a seed in 2005 and continues to thrive today:

Todd and Doug and Melissa Smith became acquainted at a church planters boot camp at Southpark Community Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2005. It was during this boot camp that God began to knit together the hearts of these families and the dreams God had given them for his kingdom.

As the dream began to take shape, Doug and Todd decided to share the responsibility of church leadership and took on cooperative roles in this capacity. Doug’s talents lent themselves to leading worship and handling administrative duties, and Todd’s to preaching. Over the next several weeks, Terry Harper came on board to do shepherding work, and Derrick Zamora took on the role of youth leader. The staff is unique in that three out of the four pastors are bivocational. However, things have gone well, and the church celebrated its second year of meeting publicly in September 2007.

The town of Skiatook, Oklahoma, is a mostly rural, but growing, community with many new housing subdivisions being added all the time. We launched the church with approximately twenty people, and that number has now grown to eighty. Although we began meeting in a local high school cafeteria in the nearby town of Collinsville, we have been blessed to call a main street storefront in Skiatook our home since April 2007. We say that we hold our worship time each week in “the garage of the Lord” because the property began as a car dealership more than sixty years ago. We try to reflect both our name, Courtyard, and our desire to make people feel comfortable and at ease. Our desire is to provide an atmosphere where God can meet them right where they are. We have a breakfast bar and bistro tables, and have even put some live trees around the room to give people the feeling of being outside in a real courtyard.

The church has piqued the interest of many local people as we have gone through our building renovation process. We try to use this interest to connect with people by handing out water bottles at high school football games, picking up trash after the July 4th fireworks display, financially supporting a local park that is being built, and distributing hot drinks at an open house we held during the Christmas parade. These outreach activities help the community to see us meeting the needs of individuals, and through them, we have been well-received.

Our mission statement is simple: “Bringing people together with God.” That is what we want. We want to see God’s kingdom grow with new people. We want to see people in the kingdom grow in Christ. That mission is being accomplished, and we are confident it will continue to do so. It is an amazing thing to experience the lively and moving worship. To look around and see people we didn’t even know a few years ago is truly humbling and exciting.

We have been truly blessed by the Oklahoma Assembly of the Church of God for sharing our vision by sending a planting team to the Church Plant Boot Camp in Florida three years ago. We are also grateful for the financial assistance we have received from Church Multiplication Association. Their generous gifts have helped us in numerous ways.

We praise God for growing this plant that started with the seed of a dream and a prayer and for those who have served as role models and encouragers. We are grateful for their constant contact, support, accountability, vision, and heart!

By Rachelle Nelson
Courtyard Church of God