Missions

Dony St. Germain

El Shaddai Ministries International
Haiti

Dony St Germain and his wife Sharon are key church planting movement leaders in the island country of Haiti. Dony is the liason and representative to the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) for Haiti.

Cross Park’s Partnership with ESMI

Cross Park has partnered with Dony since 2011. In addition to monthly support, CPC has sent 1-2 short term trips per year to Jeremie, Haiti. Our focus is on outreach medical clinics and children’s ministry in the remote rural village of BonBon, and teaching in the seminary and University in Jeremie. The church at BonBon was established in 2011 like Cross Park. Through medical clinics that ESMI has done in that church, the church at Bon Bon has been able to plant 5 more “preaching points,” or places of worship without a building, in the remote hillside of that region. We have also partnered with the University that ESMI has started in Jeremie by sending doctors and pastors to teach on needed topics in the school of nursing and at the seminary.

Due to recent and current political unrest and gang violence, Cross Park is not currently planning mission trips to Haiti. ESMI continues its powerful work in Evangelism, Education, Economics, Empathy and is bearing much fruit. 

An Overview of ESMI

About ESMI

West Charlotte Church at Freedom

Worship Service Location: 2701 Freedom Drive, Charlotte, NC 28208 (Movement School Auditorium)

West Charlotte Church is a church in and for urban west Charlotte. They are a brand new and growing community of faith. Their mission is to love God, make disciples, and love our neighbors according to the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. Their vision is to be a church in and for urban west Charlotte devoted to biblical teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers (Acts 2:42).

Craig & Yumiko Chapin

Christ Bible Institute team
Nagoya, Japan

At age 14, Craig was convicted of the Lord’s call to mission. He kept that call before him through his teens and 20s, as the magnitude of the gospel grew in his understanding. At age 26, the Lord led Craig to Japan, and he has served Christ there for the better part of the past 35 years. Raised in a Buddhist family, Yumiko fell in love with classical music at an early age and studied at Kunitachi College of Music. In her mid-20s she met Christ through a church-run English school. Eight years later, she and Craig had their first date and married in 1999. The Chapins work with the Christ Bible Institute team in Nagoya, Japan—the third-largest city in the world’s second-largest unreached people group. Craig teaches New Testament at Christ Bible Seminary, serves as the seminary’s academic dean, and manages the seminary library. CBI’s vision is to see the gospel of the glory of Christ cherished and proclaimed throughout Japan. To this end, the seminary equips Christians in Japan for the work of gospel ministry. Yumiko is involved in Bible studies and employs her musical skills for the seminary and in church ministry, playing piano for worship services, for seminary ceremonies, and for choir rehearsals and concerts. In addition, she helps Craig to express biblical truths with sensitivity to the language and culture of Japan.

Haley Chitty

SIM and Cornerstone Counseling Foundation
Chiang Mai, Thailand

Haley serves as clinical director at Cornerstone Counseling Foundation, whose mission is to provide healing and hope for Christian workers in Thailand and throughout Asia. Haley’s ministry experience includes seven years of college campus ministry with Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ), followed by graduate studies in Christian Counseling at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte. She is currently pursuing her PhD from Gordon-Conwell.

Nick & Sarah DeVusser

RUF
Johnson & Wales University

Nick and his wife Sarah have lived in Charlotte since the summer of 2019. Nick is the RUF Campus Associate at Johnson and Wales University here in Charlotte. He is currently finishing up his Masters in Divinity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte and hopes to work with RUF in the future as well. Nick and Sarah have one child, Miles, and one dog, Spurgeon.

Josh & Ashley Grimm

RUF
Queens University

Josh is from Charleston, SC, and graduated from Erskine College (where he was involved with RUF as a student) in 2009 with a BA in Bible/Religion and Philosophy. In 2010 Josh met Ashley at a wedding, and they married in 2012. That year they moved to Charlotte for Josh to go to seminary while Ashley began working as a nurse. Josh graduated from RTS Charlotte with an MDiv in 2015, and started RUF at Queens in 2016. Ashley and Josh have five children: Isaac (’16), Ruby (’18), Eliza (’19), Charlotte (’21), and Peter (’23). Among the many aspects of campus ministry Josh enjoys are meeting with students to talk about life over coffee or a meal, and playing a competitive game of spikeball!

Paul and Clare Hudson

SIM
Charlotte, NC

Paul and Clare have been serving in mission with SIM for 34 years! They first worked in southern Ethiopia doing medical outreach, community development. Due to the civil war there, they had to return to the US, but soon re-deployed to Nepal in the mid-90’s. There they did medical work and participated in outreach to Tibetan Buddhists. Clare’s breast cancer diagnosis brought them back home in 1997. At that point Paul began working globally with SIM’s ministries of compassion. He helped start SIM’s multi-country Hope for AIDS program; this enabled national partners and churches to care for the most marginalized by Gospel word and deed. They spent the decade between 2004-2013 in Asia, where Paul served as Regional Director for SIM’s work in 5 countries. Since 2014 they have worked in the US but with a global focus helping SIM to integrate health care ministries and Gospel outreach, as well as medical leadership development. Clare has worked in Member Care and counseling since 2008.

Bob and Karen Ihrig

SIM
Charlotte, NC

Bob & Karen worked in discipleship ministry in their churches for many years in the Northwest before moving north of Seattle so that Bob could attend Ministerial Study program while they continued to raise their children and teach God’s word in their local church and neighborhood.

Much to Bob & Karen’s surprise, the Lord called them to serve as missionaries as a Pastor/Builder and a Medical Assistant for SIM’s Medical project in South Sudan, Africa.

Bob was established as team leader for their first year in South Sudan. Caring for the missionaries, discipling his Sudanese workers while leading construction projects for SIM’s medical clinics and training local pastors was his passion.  As a certified medical assistant, Karen enjoyed training Sudanese men and women to care for severely ill and malnourished children, teaching her staff God’s Word and how to reach out to their community through a Community Health ministry.

When serious conflict broke out in South Sudan, Bob & Karen were asked to serve as leaders at SIM USA’s campus ministry here in Charlotte. Bob leads the Operational Services of SIM USA’s ninety acre campus, including buildings, grounds, venders, and campus volunteers. Bob continues to be recruited to teach and preach at SIM’s training events.

Bob & Karen enjoy using their Christian coaching skills to help believers thrive in their relationship with the Lord and others.

After 7 years of managing SIM’s Hospitality service for new and seasoned missionaries attending meetings and training on campus, Karen was recruited to SIM’s Member Care team where she uses her Christian coaching skills to care for and walk with missionaries serving overseas and in the USA.

Bob & Karen have been serving with Cross Park Church and SIM USA campus ministries for ten years now and look forward to many years to come.

Luke & Denise Johnson

SIM
Thailand

Denise and Luke (along with their mission organization, SIM) are convinced that no one should live and die without hearing God’s good news. By God’s grace, they want to help make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ in communities where He is least known. They live in Chiang Mai, Thailand and serve by doing a little bit of everything. Luke is involved in video and media ministry, church-based community evangelism and discipleship, and does some behind-the-scenes administration. Denise is an RN and is the health advisor for SIM Thailand while also serving on the SIM Thailand missionary care team. The SIM Thailand team’s mission is “[To see] the unreached of Thailand authentically respond to the gospel and be discipled into biblically-based, community-transforming churches that engage in mission. Our mission is to make disciples where He is not yet known.” Ninety-nine percent of Thai people are not Christians. Most Thai people have never heard the good news of Jesus. Many communities have no churches.

Luke has been a member of Cross Park Church since it was planted. He has been with SIM since 2009 and lived in Asia since 2015. There, he met Denise, also a missionary, and they were married in 2017. They have three children. They also have a housekeeper named Wai who has become another member of the family. Please pray for Wai. Wai grew up in a Roman Catholic family but is not a practicing Christian.

MNA

Charles has 15 years of pastoral ministry leadership experience. He co-planted West Charlotte Church (PCA) in the urban west Charlotte African American community. West Charlotte is the first and only African American-led PCA church planted by another African American-led church in denominational history (Christ Central Church, Rev. Howard Brown). He served as an Assistant Pastor at Christ Central Church prior toplanting West Charlotte.

Charles currently serves in the following denominational leadership roles:
• Coordinator of Missions to North America African American Ministries
• Executive Director of the Center for African American Church Planting
• Co-Host of the Between The Pew podcast.
• Advisory Committee member for the following: Missions to North America Unity Fund, Missions to The World, Covenant Seminary, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Link Conference, and for the Central Carolina Presbytery Church Planting Committee

Charles has a Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte), attended the US Naval Academy (Annapolis), and has degrees in English and African American Diaspora Studies from the University of North Carolina (Greensboro). Charles and his wife Charlotte have four children and he is the son of an AME Zion pastor.

Find out more about Charles and ways to connect to his ministry at charlesamcknight.com.

Tyler and Brooke Miller

Cru
Charlotte, NC

Brooke has served with Cru for over 18 years, stateside and abroad.  She currently provides training and support to 400 of Cru’s campus missionaries.  Cru’s mission is to win lost students and faculty to Christ, to build them up in their faith, and to send them out as Christ-centered laborers.  The mission matters and the missionaries matter, which is why Brooke is passionate about coming alongside them in the field, that they might thrive. In addition, she serves in evaluating and hiring new staff and interns, as well as coaching new international interns as they prepare to go to the world. In her spare time she loves being mom to two amazing kids and wife to Tyler who serves as an Assistant Pastor at Uptown Church.

Jeff & Gabby Neikirk

Jeff and Gabby both participated in RUF at Tennessee Tech (where they met!). Both of them grew tremendously in their faith during their time with RUF. During Jeff’s junior year, he began to feel a call to ministry; so once he graduated, he served with RUF for three years as an intern at Tennessee Tech. In 2023, Gabby and Jeff moved to Charlotte so he could attend seminary with the hope of returning to RUF as a campus minister. He currently is serving part-time at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC.

Juan Rodriguez

RUF
UNCC

Cynthia Ruble

Global Outreach International
Japan

Jase & Jana Tunell

Wycliffe Bible Translator
Central Indonesia