THE LELAND STORY
The mission of Port City Community Church is “to reach people and help them walk with God.”
Since 2010, we have felt God calling our church to expand our reach to the town of Leland, North Carolina.
So we began the work of reflecting God’s goodness, building connections of trust, and making space to care for the community of Leland.
It’s impossible to tell the story of our Leland Campus without reflecting on God’s faithfulness to this community over the years.
In January 2012, we launched the Leland campus, gathering weekly at Belville Elementary School. Every Sunday, countless volunteers and staff would gather early in the morning to set up stages, curtains, children’s environments, broadcast equipment, lighting and sound, and connection spaces so their friends, family, and neighbors could encounter Christ’s love.
Our teams are proficient at upfitting temporary church environments. But the hours devoted to solving logistical problems, recruiting volunteers, and rallying the manpower to meet the weekly demands of a mobile campus ultimately diminish our capacity to reach Leland.
Reach is not about building our brand or an attempt to boost attendance.
Reach is the expression of God’s love by the extension of ourselves. For 11 years, we’ve been faithful to this calling without a permanent building in the community.
We caught a glimpse of how our church can serve and invest in our community when we had a temporary building from 2021-2022. We know that there is so much more to come as God works in us and through us to serve our Leland area.
Now, over a decade later, after countless stories of God’s faithfulness, we built a permanent home in the town of Leland!
CONTRIBUTE TO THE STORY OF LELAND!
Join us as we look back on God’s faithfulness:
January 2012- The Leland campus launched on Sunday, January 8, 2012, gathering weekly at Belville Elementary School.
January 2013- After a year of navigating the challenges of a mobile campus with a growing staff and volunteer team, Leland celebrated it’s first birthday!
September 2013- The continual growth of the Leland campus required the student ministry team to have separate gatherings for middle and high school students. They also started meeting in the Westport Fire Department for more space!
For the Leland campus to be completely mobile, a large group of dedicated volunteers is required. Rob’s story is a testament that God is working not only through us but also in us!
May 2015- Don Brown became the campus pastor of Port City Leland.
May 21, 2015- we purchased approximately 30 acres of land to build a permanent home for Leland! We began site planning for a future building.
July of 2016- In an incredible turn of events, we had 75 acres of land on Old Fayetteville Road donated to us! We began meeting with land planners and engineers about our best options for building plans going forward.
2018- After seeking counsel, we decided to sell the land we purchased in 2015 and develop a permanent site on the donated land.
August 2018- We put our building development on pause as we looked to care for our community in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. Our staff meeting space in Magnolia Greens became a distribution center for disaster relief supplies to our neighbors in need.
January 30, 2019- We made the decision to sell the original 30-acre property off Mt. Misery Road for $1,000,000.00!
Fall 2019- We engaged with builders and architects to begin the design process for establishing a future permanent home for the Leland Campus.
March of 2020- Due to the global pandemic, we made the hard decision to stop all work on the project as we adjusted our budget according to the financial uncertainty of 2020. One of the issues we faced during the pandemic was that the Brunswick County School System would not allow us to meet in any of their facilities. This forced us to meet at “off times” in other churches or at the Wilmington campus.
Fall of 2020- Developers of an adjacent property approached us regarding our space. After negotiations, we made a deal to shift our building project to the adjacent property and sell our unused land to help fund the construction of our new campus. The new property had an old 8,000-square-foot church building that we could repair and use as a temporary home.
August of 2021- The deal with the developers closed, giving the church 11.7 acres to build on and $2.1 million for construction funding! The final design plans for our new building began.
2022- The Leland campus announced one last move back to mobile church at Belville Elementary School to prepare so that construction could begin on our new property!
While our Leland campus was able to inhabit a temporary space in 2021-2022, we caught a glimpse of how our church can grow and serve in our community. During this short time, we were able to host the IF Gathering, a Leland Community Wellness event, funeral services, and a candlelight remembrance ceremony for members of our church. Additionally, we were able to assist our local schools by being a site for AP testing. We know that there is so much more to come as we have a permanent base to care for our community!
November of 2022- The Leland campus gathered to pray and celebrate the groundbreaking of the future Port City Church Leland building.
December 7, 2022- Demolition began on the temporary building we inherited so that construction on our new church building could begin!
Early 2023- Good progress is being made on the foundation of the future home of the Leland campus!
April 2023- We’re making progress! We have walls and a roof!
May 2023- Our Leland staff served lunch to thank the contractors and employees who have put in so much hard work to make our new church home a reality. We are so excited to have a permanent space and stable presence in Brunswick County!
September 2023 - We celebrated God’s provision and faithfulness, and we know that this building is truly for our community.
November 26, 2023 - The Leland Campus held its final service at Belville Elementary School!
In this video, we closed the truck after our last Sunday as a mobile church!
December 6, 2023- Our entire staff from all Port City campuses gathered together at the new Leland Campus building for our last All-Staff meeting of the year. We shared a meal together, participated in a prayer walk through all the environments, talked about God's faithfulness, and then prayed specifically for the Leland Campus Staff.
December 10, 2023- The Leland Campus hosted a soft-launch for volunteers to prepare for a grand opening on December 17!
December 17, 2023- After 12 years of being mobile, the Leland campus has its own permanent location in Brunswick County!
And a “historically intense December coastal storm” that brought heavy rainfall, coastal flooding, and high winds, didn’t keep over 600 people from attending the grand opening!
This building is a testament to God’s faithfulness, and it affirms our community that we are here to be a long-lasting presence in the area where God has placed us!
We are excited and expectant to see what happens when shift the energy we previously put into the logistics of being a mobile campus and channel even more energy into a physical hub with much more gathering potential, equipping potential, caring potential, and sending potential. We are here to reach the people moving into one of the fastest-growing municipalities in North Carolina and help them walk with God.
**Check out the last two photos to see our live link between our Wilmington and Leland campuses!
We have much to celebrate.
But the story of Leland is not done yet!
CONTRIBUTE TO THE STORY OF LELAND!
