Logan Tinnel was in high school in rural Summersville, West Virginia, uninterested in church, when a couple of friends invited him to a Bible study. “Somewhere in Ephesians, something happened,” he says. His heart was opened to the gospel, and he began to follow Christ.

Not long after his conversion, Logan sensed a call to plant a church and wondered if his hometown might one day be the place. After graduation, he and his friends went their separate ways, but they always had this dream, “maybe one day we’ll start our own church.” Logan headed to college, got plugged into Redemption Church, an Acts 29 church, and began preparing for ministry. 

The lead pastor at Redemption mentored and coached Logan through a church planting internship. When it was time, Redemption sent him back home to plant Grace Gospel Church in Summersville.

“There is not a detail of our church planting story that isn’t saturated with Acts 29,” Logan says. Pastors across West Virginia rallied around him before and after planting—offering counsel, praying for him, and even stepping in to serve on his first elder board, giving the church stability from day one. It’s a story of many churches working together to multiply gospel impact—impact Logan hopes to pay forward by multiplying out another church in Fayetteville, WV, in the next couple of years.

Today, Grace Gospel Church meets in a historic building in town, and the gang is back together. Two of Logan’s friends from that original high school Bible study now serve as leaders in the church. The building itself once held his grandparents’ church.

For Logan, this new church is a full-circle moment.