Mall-Launched Church Plant in N.C.'s Alamance County Moves Into a Former Lutheran Church
The Oaks Community Church started in Burlington's Holly Hill Mall, has baptized six new believers and this month moves into a permanent home in Gibsonville.
See where this is ›BURLINGTON, N.C. —
A young Baptist church plant that held its first services in a shopping mall in Burlington, N.C., is moving this month into a permanent building in nearby Gibsonville, the Biblical Recorder reported Nov. 6.
See where this is ›The Oaks Community Church, led by Pastor Mike Mitchener, held its kickoff service Aug. 16 at the Holly Hill Mall and Business Center in Burlington, with worship going on as shoppers walked past. The church now draws more than 50 people each week and has baptized six new believers, among them the grandson of a launch team member and his wife.
In November the congregation moves into a former Lutheran church building in Gibsonville. The building had not been used as a church for five years after an individual bought it, according to the Recorder.
See where this is ›The work grew from a Sunday evening Bible study at The Hive coffee shop in Gibsonville in the spring of 2025. Services at the mall began last fall, and weekly Sunday morning services started in May. “We exist so that the lost are saved, the saved are sent and the church is built,” Mitchener told the paper.
Mitchener and his wife, Stephanie, served a church in Virginia from 2020 to 2023 and came back to Alamance County in August 2023; they had planted a church there in 2000 that is still going. After attending the N.C. Baptist Disciple-Making Conference in Raleigh in February 2025, the couple committed to plant on April 30, 2025, finished the SendNC assessment by August and then trained for 10 months. Stephanie Mitchener leads a women's Bible study and disciples college students with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Jordan Gealy oversees small groups and serves on the finance team.
The Recorder said the area is home to people from at least 26 nations and seven ethnic groups, and four of those groups were present at the first service. “When I was a young man, I had to go to the nations to reach them,” Mitchener said. “The Lord has brought the nations here.”
The Oaks is one of 32 church plants launched in North Carolina this year. Its partners include SendNC, the church-planting arm of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina led by director Mike Pittman; the North American Mission Board's Send Network; Mercy Hill Collaborative; and its sending church, Perkinsville Church in Boone, N.C., where Seth Norris is pastor.
