Snapshot: Mount Paran North Canton Campus

Website: www.mpncanton.com

Worship style: Contemporary

Average Sunday attendance: 280

Ministers: The senior pastor for Mount Paran North Marietta and Canton campuses is the Rev. Mark Walker, PhD. The Canton campus pastor is Jeremy Isaacs.

Denomination affiliation: Church of God

Mission statement:

“Mount Paran North is a place where we Engage Life Together by discovering and living a Christ-centered life of Loving God, Making Friends, Serving Others and Sharing the Story.”

History:

The Mount Paran North Campus in Marietta decided to open a Canton location based on studies that showed more than 85,000 unchurched people live within a 7-mile radius of Sequoyah High School. Isaacs, who lives in Canton, was chosen to lead the church start, which began holding weekly services at the first of this year.

Pastor’s path:

Isaacs was raised in a family of pastors -- his father, grandparents, and aunts and uncles on both sides of the family. He resisted the family “business” and set his sights on law and politics. He was a student at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn., when he said God got his attention in a chapel service.

“I wasn’t even listening to what the pastor was saying. At some point during that service, I felt the Lord grab my heart. I perked up and went to the altar that night,” Isaacs said. “I said OK, God, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

He immediately jumped into student ministry, working as a youth pastor in Cleveland while in school. Before graduating, he left school for a job in Mobile in 2003 to support his new family. In spring 2009, his mother was diagnosed with cancer.

“It was always her dream that I finish at Lee,” Isaacs said. “She asked me to promise I would go back and finish.”

He enrolled in Lee’s distance-learning program and completed his undergrad degree in Christian ministries with a Bible/theology emphasis in the spring of 2011. She died two months before he graduated.

His next step was online seminary classes from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. He expects to graduate in December with a master’s in theological studies.

Isaacs joined the Mount Paran North staff in 2007, working first with students and youths before becoming the 20s and 30s pastor and director of next generation ministries.

Ministries:

As a portable church, services are made possible by teams that arrive as early as 6:45 a.m. to unload and set up for worship. Working that shift is an important ministry in the church.

The church has a growing children’s ministry, with 70 to 75 kids between birth and 5th grade.

“Since we’ve launched, we seem to be really connecting to young families, young couples and singles," Isaacs said. "That’s our heart, to connect to those folks.”

On a recent Sunday, attendance broke 300 -- the highest since the January launch on a non-Easter Sunday. For Easter, Isaacs said more than 525 people attended, with 150 to 200 of them first-time visitors. “It blew us away,” he said.

Members are becoming more active in community ministries, volunteering to pray with patients each Saturday at the Bethesda Community Clinic and assemble lunches for MUST Ministries’ summer lunch program.

“Our hope is that by us being here and meeting here in this community, we can help make an impact,” Isaacs said.

The church offers numerous life groups throughout Cherokee County and a new one that just began in Cobb County. The groups meet throughout the month, offering a comfortable setting where members can grow in Christ while making good friends.

Thoughts from the pastor:

“We launched this campus out of an existing ministry [Mount Paran Church of God] that has a great heritage in Atlanta, going back to the 1930s and 40s. This is a brand-new work, and we’re excited about what God has birthed here and what God continues to do. We are not just seeing a bunch of church people moving to a different church. There are people walking through the doors who haven’t attended in 25 years or more because their friends and neighbors have brought them. It’s incredible to watch.”