Susan Cox, who lacked a personal relationship with Christ when she started Re|Engage, says the ministry transformed her views on marriage. “We had not done it in a way that really honored God. We really learned what God’s designs for marriage were.” The ministry not only helped Cox save her marriage and grow closer to Christ but also inspired her to leave her teaching job last year to join Watermark’s staff, where she now serves as women’s director of Re|Engage.
Like the marriage ministry, roughly half of the people who attend The Porch, Watermark’s young adult ministry, don’t attend the church. Given its name “because in the 1950s that’s where people hung out and fellowshipped,” says The Porch’s head Jonathan Pokluda, the ministry doesn’t shy away from touchy subjects. Abortion, pornography and Islam have all come up during The Porch service, which 3,000 people attend weekly.
“We challenge people to be more fully devoted,” Pokluda explains. “We’re not calling them to easy ‘believe-ism.’ We tell the church a relationship with Christ is the most important thing.”
Ninety percent of newcomers to Watermark across all age groups either recently converted to Christianity or have chosen to seriously practice their faith for the first time, Wagner says. “We’ve always believed that for a church to really be successful it has got to get younger, and I believe that not just in terms of chronological age but in terms of spiritual age, whether a person is 40 just coming to Christ or 20 just coming to Christ. The next generation of believers is a mark a church is definitely growing.”
WATERMARK COMMUNITY CHURCH Dallas, Texas
Senior Pastor: Todd Wagner
Twitter: @WordsFromWags
Website: Watermark.org
Founded: 1999
Affiliation: Nondenominational
Locations: 2
Attendance: 8,876
Growth in 2012: +1,980 (29%)
Fastest-Growing: 13
Largest: 52
