An Open Invitation: Parkway Fellowship

Tony Gambone spent two decades working in the casino business in Nevada, Louisiana and Mississippi—rising from a dealer all the way to the director of casino operations. Deciding to get out of the “crazy” life, he and his family moved to Katy, Texas, in 1998 to open a remodeling business. Then, in 2008, a disease he’d struggled with since childhood—Crohn’s disease—returned and he had to “give up everything because I couldn’t work anymore.”

“I spent a little time at home, feeling sorry for myself,” says Gambone, the founder of Katy’s Tough Talk Business Network and the author of the Amazon international bestselling book, Share Your Message with the World. “My wife asked me if I’d watch a video about a new church she’d found,” he recalls. “I was not really big on church. My story was that I was afraid to go to church because I was afraid I’d get hit by lightning when I came out. I was raised a Catholic.”

Nevertheless, Gambone watched a video of Parkway Fellowship Senior Pastor Mike McGown speaking and decided to attend the church on Valentine’s Day 2010. During the service, Gambone says he felt “very strange, very warm—like almost sweaty.”

“I couldn’t control my emotions,” Gambone remembers. “I had a lot of tears coming out of my eyes. I couldn’t figure out what it was. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t in control. On Easter, I became a Christ follower. Every time I went to church everything that was going on at home came up in the sermons.”

Gambone and his wife Wendy are among a rapidly growing number of new members at the 2,600-member church in Katy, a suburb of Houston.

In 2002, McGown and his wife Amy founded the church along with 16 other families. At the time, McGown was on staff at another church, had attended a Purpose Driven Church conference and felt the Lord was calling him to found a “purpose-driven church” that effectively serves 10 percent of the population in his area.

“I hadn’t ever planted a church, I never wanted to plant a church, I didn’t know how to plant a church and my wife was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with our first baby,” McGown says.

The first service was held in 2003 at a local high school, which would become the home of Parkway Fellowship for seven years. Later, the church bought a 67-acre piece of property and relocated to a new facility in 2010.

“The first Sunday we had 864 people show up,” McGown recalls. “It was huge, but grand openings always are a bit deceptive. We were hoping we could stay above 600 the next Sunday. The next Sunday we had 856 people show up. It was standing room only. I announced we would go to two services to alleviate overcrowding. We never looked back. Today, our average attendance is about 2,600 people.”

McGown attributes the rapid growth to several factors, including the “very evangelistic temperature at the church.”

“We present the gospel every single week in every single service and give people a chance to become Christ followers for the first time,” McGown says. “Also, our staff reports in meetings every single week how many people they invited to church that week and we set goals. We do a little competition to foster that.”

Secondly, the church provides members with invite cards to give to their family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.

“We put them in every single seat,” McGown explains. “Whenever we have a big [sermon] series, we’ll put those cards on the seats two weeks prior, and part of the message will be about the need to reach out to people and invite them to church. When you provide people with an invite card, you make it easy for them to invite their friends.”

“People invite their friends like crazy,” he says. “Our fall series is so big and people invite so many friends that 50 percent of our growth for the entire year comes during our fall series.”

PARKWAY FELLOWSHIP
Richmond, Texas
Senior Pastor: Mike McGown
Twitter: @mikemcgown
Website: ParkwayFellowship.com
Founded: 2003
Affiliation: Southern Baptist
Locations: 2
Attendance: 2,650
Growth in 2013: +504 (23%)
Fastest Growing: 35

Troy Anderson
Troy Andersonwww.troyandersonwriter.com

An award-winning journalist at the Los Angeles Daily News, The Press-Enterprise and other newspapers for two decades, Troy Anderson writes for Reuters, Newsmax, Christianity Today, Human Events, Charisma and many other media outlets. During his career, he's won more than two dozen writing awards, 2011 and 2012 Eddie Awards and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Irvine, Calif.

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