A mountain of faith brings Christwalk Church to Millersburg
Christwalk Church found a home in Millersburg, where it settled into the old Northside Baptist Church building.
This is the first of a series of four stories that explores a family's journey of faith from Georgia to Amish Country.
The walk of faith for Chip and Donna Woodall, founders of Christwalk International Ministries Inc., has been anything but easy for them and their family.
It seems as though the couple has charged up one mountain pinnacle, only to discover that at the top of that mountain was another mountain to climb. Faithfully, they have listened to God and continued to climb, and every time there have been obstacles that seemed too big to handle on their own, they have seen God’s hand at work.
The Woodall family’s walk in following God’s footsteps has led them from a tiny ministry in Georgia to Amish Country, and the path God has chosen for them is filled with incredible circumstances that only left them in awe of God’s handiwork.
The Woodalls have five children, and for 18 years they have raised their children in the ranks of the ministry in service.
As the operations director at the YMCA in Augusta, Georgia, Chip Woodall was called to a hospital visit. On his return from that visit, a huge rainbow appeared in the sky, and Woodall received a message.
“I know this will sound insane for some people, but I saw that rainbow and I saw Christwalk International Ministries,” Woodall said. “I said, ‘Lord, are you showing me something?’ And the answer clearly was yes.”
Woodall was overwhelmed. He told his wife, and they cried and prayed together with their children.
The answers to all of their questions were unclear, but they clung to that image of a new ministry.
Woodall eventually began a family life center, teaching Bible classes as part of a church. That led to a license and then ordination through the Southern Baptist Convention. Then came a calling to a tiny backwater village called Lincolnton, Georgia, where they led a small church.
The Assembly of God church began to grow, with attendance split between black and white parishioners.
His church began connecting with area high school students, and they began offering a meal to all of the Wednesday Bible School attendees.
“It was interesting because in the beginning they would sit segregated,” Woodall said of the meetings. “Then I slowly watched them come to the altar segregated. Then I watched them mingle at the altar united. What we saw was beautiful because we saw a community come together, and we saw God breaking down all of these social barriers.”
The relationship between the church, the school and the community blossomed, but the rainbow message lingered during what Woodall called an 18-year holding pattern. He said God finally gave them a sign: They would travel to the North Georgia Mountains.
At a revival meeting, a prophetic evangelist singled Woodall out of the crowd, got in his personal space and told him in no uncertain terms, “You’re going to the mountains to set them on fire.”
Woodall was shocked.
"There was no way he could have known our plans. The idea of us going to the mountains never got further than our family," Woodall said. "That started the journey of Christwalk."
In faith, they put their house on the market. It didn’t sell, but the Woodalls prepared to move. Then a man from the community visited on moving day as they packed up their belongings. He said he saw the moving trucks and knew they hadn’t sold their home. He volunteered to make the house payments until it sold. He made nine.
God kept sending people to help them meet needs. The Woodalls owned a small sedan, not built for the mountains. A woman called. Her father had just passed away, and she wanted to gift them his all-wheel drive Lexus SUV.
In the move the Woodalls lost both of their salaries: Chip’s as a pastor and Donna’s as a school secretary. They lost their insurance through Donna’s job.
In 2016 they started their mountain ministry in a mountain house they rented. They invited a few people, and the first week 13 people came. The next Sunday it was 30, after that 48.
A friend found out about this tiny church crammed into a tiny house, and he allowed Christwalk to use his facility that he used for wedding venues. He allowed them to use it on Wednesday evenings and for Sunday services.
For six months they had church there until it filled up. Another move found them moving into an old pool hall.
“It stunk. It was run down, off the beaten path and nasty,” Woodall said. “I remember Donna wondering what we were doing, but we were both sure that was where we were supposed to be.”
In a tiny, run-down pool hall, the church had grown to 150 members.
“God told us that our theme was to show the redeeming love of Jesus to everyone we meet,” Woodall said. “We knew we would have some come and stay. Some will come and we would equip them to go out into ministry, and some come and can’t get past their circumstances because of the hard truth we teach.”
That proved to be very true, but Woodall said they have watched God transform lives every step of the way.
Amazingly, the Woodalls were continuing the ministry without taking any kind of salary.
A hasty retreat to furthering Christwalk
In 2018 Woodall said they found out about a retreat center in the mountains, a debt-free campus with 55 acres, eight cabins, and a conference center and dining hall.
The center was founded four decades ago and was named Child Evangelism Fellowship. It went up for sale, and two missionary women — one of whom had a dream about the facility — bought it on faith and turned it into a place for missionaries to furlough.
The two women did that for years. Woodall said the stories in their journals matched nearly identically with those of Christwalk Ministries.
After both women passed away, the center was taken over by Tina Benoit. Benoit was consumed by the enormity of the center to the point where she couldn’t even find time to go to church. Worn and weary, she attended Christwalk after being invited. Feeling led, she attended, and what she experienced was an epiphany.
Several weeks later she had the Woodalls come and walk the property with her. During their walk, Woodall said he was drawn to one particular cabin. Benoit said it was because that was the cabin of Bonnie Hansen, one of the two women who began the ministry.
Benoit told the Woodalls she had been up the past two nights talking to God, and he asked her if she would give the property back to him.
“She looked at us and told us that the Lord had asked her to give the property to Christwalk Ministries,” Woodall said. “She said she was tired and didn’t know how to continue.”
The board wanted to gift it to the Woodalls because their vision was so similar with the two women who began it, and they said it could only be sold to someone with a like vision to reach out to others and serve.
Woodall said like Hansen, his wife is a fervent journaler, and if you took the journals of Hansen and his wife and put them side by side, they would be eerily similar.
In 2019 the board deeded the property to Christwalk Ministries. Fellowship Valley would now become Christwalk in the Valley.
The mountains were indeed on fire.
Now, 18 miles apart, the ministry had a church building and a 55-acre retreat.
“Life got a little bit crazy,” Woodall said. “Everything got expedited and came along way quicker than we thought it would.”
The retreat is a beautiful complex, designed to create comfort and unity for pastors and their wives as they visit and rejuvenate. Woodall said it is open to all pastors who feel they need to unwind and refocus themselves, whether it is in their church, community or family.