A Story of Urban Renewal
Over the last 20 years, Durham, North Carolina, has seen a remarkable turnaround. Downtown, abandoned buildings have been renovated and reopened as housing. Once-neglected lots have become food truck meccas. Once-empty streets now enjoy regular pedestrian traffic, as residents of the Bull City find new spaces to gather, eat, and participate in civic life.
One chapter of that revival story involves locals’ genuine pride in the city and desire to invest in its future—but another chapter involves a different kind of redemption, one that stems from a genuine love for its inhabitants. And key to that chapter is the presence of Christ Central Durham, a PCA church plant founded in 2012, just as urban renewal began to hit its stride.
Over the last 13 years, Christ Central has grown from a few dozen members to an average of 1,000 each weekend, spread across three services. Facing the normal challenges of growth as well as the pressures of shared rental space, in 2023 the church began a capital campaign called “Make Visible,” which Senior Pastor Daniel Mason believes could not have come at a better time.
Over the past 11 years Christ Central has rented two different spaces. The church worships in a shared space with a charter school in downtown Durham, but a historic church campus, just blocks from Duke University, was put up for sale by Grace Baptist Church. When the opportunity to purchase the Grace Baptist property arose, Mason said, Christ Central jumped at the chance.
Early Stages of the Campaign
After conducting due diligence, Christ Central closed on the old Grace Baptist campus earlier this summer. Though the church must remain in its current location until renovations are complete, already they have started preparing their new home. The church held a consecration service following the sale of the property, the first public opportunity to show the congregation and the city their vision for gospel ministry.
In general, most capital campaigns are like a race with five core stages: the need, the vision, the plan, the provision, and the milestones. Once the need has been defined—whether demolition, renovation, or new construction—campaign leaders sketch out the vision for how to meet that need, as well as the logistical means by which they hope to achieve it. As giving begins and the overall scale of God’s provision takes shape, the congregation celebrates milestones along the way—an eyesore comes down, a new wing opens—until the finish line has been crossed.
As with any race, that finish line can feel impossibly far off at the start, but often those first three stages take place before the gun has even fired. If the need, the vision, and the plan are clearly articulated, the provision follows much more readily. Having set a $16 million total goal, Christ Central raised $4.3 million in the initial phase of the campaign, which began publicly in February 2025. The initial commitment was enough to purchase the Grace Baptist property in May with minimal debt. To date members have pledged about half the total goal. Subsequent phases of fundraising will lead to steel-toed boots on the ground, as volunteer and contracted crews alike begin physical renovation early next year.
Discipline is critical in racing, but so is motivation. As they look ahead to their new building, Christ Central recognizes the need to worship in a space large enough for their congregation, and expanding the Grace Baptist sanctuary is among their top priorities—hopefully reducing their current number of services from three down to two. Where other congregations might then proceed to introduce classroom and office space, however, Christ Central takes a different approach: prioritizing hospitality, envisioning a point of entry to the building that will be open even before the sanctuary.
“We planted this church to be a blessing to all of Durham,” Mason says. “The hospitality center will enable us to be welcoming to the community and the city. The building is not just for our sake, but for the sake of those we’re called to love.”
Building Support, Reaching Milestones
Within this fourth stage of the campaign, another part of the provision is the balance between internal and external giving. As would be expected, much of the initial support has already come from current and past parishioners. But recognizing the opportunity to serve Durham more broadly, Christ Central has explicitly reached out to its area partners: to Durhamites, local and state foundations, and members and alumni of the nearby university community, spanning the famed research triangle of Duke , The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University.
To further this part of the process Christ Central has assembled a special task force to brainstorm how best to use a hospitality space to serve the city. It could be through conferences and unique gatherings, feeding and equipping the vulnerable, or ways not yet imagined.
“We’re always seeking to invite others in,” Mason says, recalling the campaign ethos, “as we make visible the invisible kingdom of God.”
As the campaign matures, the end of 2025 will offer at least one milestone: the level of external support that comes in this fiscal year will set the tone for how much work can realistically follow. And with the extent of renovation required throughout the new campus, Christ Central estimates that its first worship service there is still two to three years away.
Such a distance might feel daunting, but given how far the church has run to date, and the extent to which God’s provision has been revealed, Mason is optimistic about the timeline. The challenge, of course, is to maintain congregational buy-in for the long haul: to ask a church to sign up for a project that is years, not months, in the making.
Asked how church leadership seeks to maintain that feeling of buy-in, Mason identifies several key elements: clear and constant communication regarding the process, frequent remembrance of answered prayers, opportunities to use the new building prior to its full renovation (in particular for youth activities), and the continued cultivation of relationships with institutional partners.
Together, these elements will sustain the campaign even as Christ Central Durham continues in its regular rhythms of worship, service, outreach, and education—rhythms that no new building should ever displace. The goal was never a new building on its own, Mason says, but rather, a long-term presence grounded in a unique city yearning for gospel love.
“After years of landlords and all the uncertainty those situations can engender,” he observes, “we are committed to being in downtown Durham. We want the rootedness and stability that comes with ownership—not for ourselves, but for others.