VALDOSTA — One year ago, Valdosta Cinemas gained a church called The Shoreline as a regular tenant.

The church will observe its anniversary Feb. 4.

To celebrate, the church will have cake, air a video with interviews from church members and finish a clothing drive for woman and children, said Joe Buck, lead pastor.

While the first official service for Shoreline was Feb. 5, 2017, the journey to open a new church in Valdosta for Buck and his wife, Lindsey, began more than four years ago.

The Bucks felt the call to plant a different kind of church, but neither talked about it with the other, he said.

Buck was sitting in a parking lot in Macon for a meeting to evaluate candidates who want to be ordained in the Methodist church when he called his wife and told her he felt called to plant a church, he said.

He said he called in the evening and was worried about the stress the news would put on his wife, but needed to talk to her about it.

She told him she felt God was also calling her to plant a church, he said.

“That was all the affirmation I needed,” he said. “Us both feeling it and never having talked about it.”

Buck reached out to the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church that week and had a proposal in for a new church the following week.

In the two years it took the conference to tell them the church would be planted in Valdosta, the name The Shoreline, kept coming to them.

The name is derived from John, Chapter 21, where Jesus appears before the disciples as they prepare to fish by the sea of Galilee, Buck said.

“An important encounter happens there with Peter … (Jesus) told him to take care of his sheep, to take care of his followers essentially,” he said. “(Jesus) calls (the disciples) into a relationship with him, to have a meal.

“For us, as a church, we are supposed to bring people to Jesus. To teach them and equip them to go out and make more followers of Jesus.”

After the two-year wait, the Bucks arrived in Valdosta in 2016, but didn’t know anyone.

“When we got here, the hard part is getting to know people — to talk to people,” he said. “The first thing we did was meet with the primary Methodist churches in town.”

It was through meeting with these churches that Buck was able to make the contacts to start the church.

He created a video and asked the congregation for people willing to temporarily help with the church for preview services.

The preview services are a way for the church to let people in the community know the church is in town.

“We are trying to get people in to introduce ourselves as a church,” Buck said. “An alternate plan is to make sure you can do it — you don’t ever want to call it a practice service, but see what went wrong, what went well.”

Originally, Shoreline would have had six preview services, but because the preview services were going well, church leadership only ran four preview services.

“I felt really good about it, and people were giving us good feed back,” Buck said. “So we pushed the launch ahead of schedule.”

It was through the preview services and meeting with the local churches that he found his worship pastor, Austin Crockett.

“Austin was also feeling the need to help plant a church,” Buck said. “And he was able to discern the call to come and help Shoreline.

“… Born and raised in Lowndes County, (Crockett) has been leading worship in this area for a long time and knows a lot of musicians,” Buck said. “It helps having someone who is from here. We came here trying to establish an identity, and he already had one.”

When the church first began, it just had a Sunday morning service at the movie theater, but has grown by adding home Bible studies, lunches at the Wood Valley Community Center, suppers at the pastor’s house, a nursery and a children’s program during the service, community mission work and a youth program that will start Feb. 10.

For community work, the church is involved with Lowndes Associated Ministries to People, a group that helps the homeless and women and children, is involved in a tutoring program at S.L. Mason Elementary School and airs a radio show called “Halfway Home,” 6 p.m. every Wednesday on Talk 92.1.

Having a church inside of a movie theater has benefits, Buck said.

“(Working with) the movie theater has been a good relationship,” he said. “They are good landlords — they are good hosts, and we try to be good guests. We’ve had twice in the year where pre-movie stuff has started — because it is a functioning theater.”

Buck also said the theater is a great place for the unchurched to feel comfortable.

“I feel the movie theater is a neutral ground for people who are exploring a relationship with God,” he said. “It’s a safe place.

“I like the idea it’s used the rest of the week and I like the idea that people come here and they can embrace it as a sacred place. The transition from a secular place to a sacred happens for people.”

But having a service in the theater is not without its challenges.

Every morning volunteers get to the theater and set up staging, sound, lights, coffee, signage, the nursery and odds and ends, Buck said.

But even with the challenges, the church still aims to reach out to the unchurched, he said.

“We want to interact with more who don’t know Jesus,” he said. “That is what is driving us, is introducing people to Jesus and the saving power he has. That’s the whole point. He loves you and he wants the best life you can have.”

Shoreline is associated with the United Methodist Church, and holds its services at Valdosta Stadium Cinemas, 1680 Baytree Road, 10:30-11:45 a.m. every Sunday.

For more information, find Shoreline on Facebook or Instagram @shorelinevaldsota, visit www.theshorelinechurch.com, mail P.O. Box 3213, 31604, or call (912) 424-1409.

Jason Smith is a reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be contacted at 229-244-3400 ext.1257.