A Discipleship Community on Gravel Road
Tucked just outside Joplin, Missouri, Carterville Christian Church - known around the church as C3 - has planted itself along a three-quarter-mile stretch of North Outer Road West, also called Gravel Road. The congregation, which takes its name from the small village of Carterville nearby, gathers for two Sunday morning services in a building set back from the highway and accessed by turning northwest onto an overpass. C3 exists, in the words of its own mission statement, "to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit." That sentence frames everything else: the Sunday gathering, the midweek children's and youth programs, the network of life groups that meet in homes across the area, the summer camp, and the missionaries the church supports on three continents.
First-time guests who visit in person are walked through a Starting Point class, a one-hour introduction offered between services and on Wednesday evenings. Those who want to take the next step toward baptism attend a separate 45-minute baptism class taught by Teaching Minister Damien Spikereit. From a one-time Sunday visit through baptism, group involvement, and serving on a ministry team, the church has laid out a clear, easy-to-follow path it calls "Next Steps."
Sunday Mornings at 9:00 and 10:45
Carterville Christian Church holds two identical Sunday morning services at 9:00 and 10:45 am. Each gathering features contemporary worship led by a team of vocalists and musicians, with Hannah Robb and Harmony Songer among the worship leaders and Creighton Tamerius overseeing the entire worship ministry. A weekly set list is posted on the church's website the week before each service, and the previous Sunday's songs are added to a running Spotify and Apple Music playlist so that people can re-listen during the week. Services are livestreamed through the church's online platform for those who cannot attend in person, and the most recent sermons are kept on a YouTube playlist for catch-up viewing.
Sermons are preached primarily by Senior Minister Austin Weece, with Damien Spikereit teaching regularly in the rotation as well. The teaching is grounded in Scripture: Weece and Spikereit walk through books of the Bible (recent series include "Our Family Tree" through Genesis and "Living the Dream" through the story of Joseph) and apply them to everyday life. Sermon notes and small-group discussion guides are posted online after each service, along with a parent-friendly version of the same passage for families with students.
Children are a core part of Sunday morning at C3. Birth through Pre-K programming runs during both services, with check-in at the children's wing. K-5th graders are released partway through the worship service for their own age-appropriate teaching in what the children's team calls "Station 4.19." Safety is taken seriously: every C3 Family Ministry volunteer is background checked, approved, and trained, and a secure check-in system is used for every child on Sunday morning and Wednesday night.
What C3 Believes
Carterville Christian Church describes itself as evangelical and non-denominational, and its statement of faith centers on the historic Christian doctrines rather than on a denominational distinct. The church believes in one God who exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creator and sustainer of all things. It holds that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, born of the virgin Mary, who lived a sinless life and died as an atoning sacrifice, rose bodily on the third day, ascended to the Father, and will return to judge the living and the dead. The Holy Spirit, fully God, is given to all believers to sustain, encourage, guide, and convict.
The Bible is treated as the inspired and trustworthy Word of God and the final authority for Christian living. Salvation is described as coming by grace through faith in Jesus and is expressed through hearing the gospel, believing in Jesus as God's Son, confessing him as Lord, repenting of sin, being immersed in water baptism, and living in obedience to his Word. The church practices believer's baptism by immersion and offers baptism classes for adults, students, and children whose parents sense a profession of faith is beginning.
C3 also affirms marriage, defined in its statement, as a lifelong exclusive relationship between a man and a woman. The church teaches that all people are created in God's image and that all life is sacred from conception to death. It understands itself as the body and bride of Christ, governed by local elders who shepherd the people and protect the doctrine, and led by Jesus' great commission to "go and make disciples of all nations."
Wednesday Nights for Kids and Students
The midweek pulse of the church happens on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, when the building fills with children and students. C3 Kids programming is offered for K-5th graders, complete with small groups, games, worship, and large-group teaching. Teenagers in grades 6-12 gather at the same time for C3 Youth, a ministry built on four pillars: weekly programming, small groups, community outreach, and C3 Youth events. Danny Foster, the church's Youth Minister, runs the program along with a team of background-checked adult volunteers.
Sunday school for students runs during the 9:00 am Sunday service, so the typical C3 student attends Sunday school in the morning, the 10:45 am worship service with their family, and then returns on Wednesday night. Special events throughout the year include a 6th-8th grade retreat in the fall, a summer CIY MOVE conference for high schoolers, and a week of overnight camp at Camp CYOKAMO about eight miles from the church. Kid Quest, the church's Vacation Bible School, fills one late-July week with Bible teaching, games, music, and missions-focused activities.
C3 Kids: From the Nursery Through Fifth Grade
C3 Kids is staffed by an entire team of dedicated ministers. Krystin Stroud oversees programming from birth through Pre-K and is supported in nursery and preschool care during the week for volunteers and adults attending Bible study electives and life groups. Gwen Utter leads the K-5th grade ministry and coordinates trips, camps, and the SuperStart weekend for 4th and 5th graders. Stacey Spikereit, the church's Family Minister, oversees the entire span from infancy through college age and partners with parents in the discipleship of their children. Miranda Browning, the Family Ministry Administrator, coordinates event logistics, registrations, and check-ins.
Sunday morning programming for kids happens during both the 9:00 and 10:45 am services, and K-5th graders return on Wednesday evenings. Parents can pull up their child's current curriculum, memory verses, and take-home materials on the church's "For Parents" page, and the children's ministry recommends a small reading list for parents that includes titles such as "Grace-Filled Parenting" by Paul David Tripp, "Live No Lies" by John Mark Comer, and "Raising Disciples" by Teresa Roberts.
During the summer, the children's ministry hosts Popsicles at the Park each month, a Preschool Story Hour for toddlers through Pre-K with their grown-ups, and a Summer Kids Club on Wednesday evenings. Promotion Sunday each May marks the day students move up to the class they will enter that fall, and the new school year kicks off with a Back to School Sunday featuring prayer and appreciation for school employees.
Groups, Life Groups, and the 36 "One Anothers"
Small groups sit at the heart of how the church does discipleship. Carterville Christian Church points to the New Testament's roughly 36 "one another" commands - love one another, encourage one another, bear one another's burdens - as the biblical case for gathering in groups. Two formats are offered: ongoing Life Groups that stay together from year to year, and Short-Term Groups that run about eight weeks at the start of each semester and are designed for people with busy schedules or those simply wanting to try a group.
Groups meet on different days of the week depending on the leader and the participants. Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Tuesday early morning, Wednesday evening, and Thursday morning groups are all active. A C3 Young Adults group serves people ages 21-30 on Sunday evenings. C3 provides free childcare for any group that meets on Sunday or Wednesday evenings, and group study materials range from books of the Bible to the current Sunday sermon series to specially written curricula. Most groups meet in homes within about a ten-minute drive of the church, though some gather on campus.
Men, Women, and College
The church runs three parallel adult ministries. C3 Men exists "to build each other up as fathers, husbands, and followers of Jesus." The men meet for a monthly prayer breakfast on Saturday mornings and gather in groups during the week. Austin Weece, the Senior Minister, oversees men's ministry in addition to his preaching duties.
C3 Women is built around studying Scripture and praying in community with one another. The women's ministry hosts a two-day retreat each spring in partnership with Ozark Christian College's Women's Conference, and weekly women's groups meet on Thursday mornings. Stacey Spikereit supervises women's ministry along with her family ministry responsibilities.
For college-age students - many of whom are connected to nearby Ozark Christian College - C3 College hosts a Sunday lunch after the 10:45 am service during the fall and spring semesters, along with a weekly adults group and a dedicated text group. College students can also plug into the general life groups on Sunday or Wednesday evenings.
Local and Global Outreach
Outreach at C3 is organized under two arms: local and global. On the local side, the Blessing Box is a free, accessible mini-food pantry stocked with nonperishable food, books, and hygiene items that anyone in the community can use. C3 partners with Watered Gardens, a Joplin ministry that serves people experiencing homelessness, and sends serving teams to prepare and serve breakfast there several times a year. The annual Fall Outreach Project focuses on giving generously to two local children's homes and a local elementary school. LifeChoices, a local pregnancy resource center, is supported through an annual baby bottle change-for-life campaign. Camp CYOKAMO, the camp C3 helped found outside Joplin, hosts summer camps for K-12th graders and serves the wider community as well.
On the global side, the church supports Andrew and Jennifer, a family serving in Central Asia through a language center in a region where believers are few and conversion often carries the cost of being disowned by family. The church also partners with Rebekah Hannum, a missionary with Anchor418 serving in Ordes, Galicia, in northwestern Spain, where a media ministry and a community center (with its own Cornhole Club) are the team's main contact points for the gospel. The church has historically supported Mission Caribe and a slate of other Christian ministries - including Watered Gardens, Show Me Helping Kids, Life Voices, CMFI's work in Ivory Coast, the Mustard Seed network, and the Haitian Christian Mission - through prayer, finances, and short-term trips.
Prayer, Listening, and Following Jesus
Two prayer tools support the congregation. The Public Prayer Wall is an online feed where members of the church submit requests that are visible to other C3 members and forwarded to the staff, elders, and prayer team. The Private Prayer form goes only to the staff, elders, and prayer team, with an option to limit the recipients to the pastors for especially sensitive matters.
The website also hosts a section called "Jesus Story," an invitation for anyone to share a brief testimony in three short sentences. The church's prompt is structured: describe life before Jesus, describe how Jesus changed that story, and describe what is true now. The discipleship model C3 uses - "being with Jesus, in community, and on mission" - shows up in almost every ministry page and staff bio. It is the through-line that ties the Sunday gathering, the Wednesday night programs, the life groups, the global partners, and the baptism class into a single shape.
Worship, Tech, and Creative Arts
The worship team is led by Worship Minister Creighton Tamerius and includes vocalists, instrumentalists, and production volunteers. Hannah Robb and Harmony Songer serve as worship leaders alongside Tamerius. Keith Bell, the Creative Arts Minister, oversees all creative content, live production, and post-production, and manages volunteer teams in tech, worship, and media. Simon Wells schedules and leads the tech teams on Wednesday nights and supports Sunday morning production. Josh Sargent, the IT Director, keeps the systems behind the scenes running. Together this team produces the weekly online set list, the Sunday livestream, the sermon podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and the social media clips shared through Facebook and Instagram.
Leadership and Elders
Austin Weece has served as Senior Minister since 2024, after years as C3's youth minister, and leads the staff and elders while continuing to preach and provide pastoral counsel. Damien Spikereit, who also serves as the Executive Vice President of Administration at Ozark Christian College, preaches and writes curriculum. Stacey Spikereit oversees family ministry from infancy through college age, supervises women's ministry, and coordinates all-church events. Danny Foster leads the youth ministry. Krystin Stroud and Gwen Utter lead children's ministry. Creighton Tamerius leads worship.
Four lay elders shepherd the congregation alongside the staff: Doug Greek, Mark Hand, Dave McCune, and Charlie Mitchell. These men, named on the staff page, provide spiritual oversight consistent with the 1 Timothy 3 vision of plural eldership that C3 affirms in its statement of faith. Rachel Bontrager serves as Financial Administrator, Jason Shryer as Facilities Manager, Tammy Davison as Cafe Manager in the church's atrium, and Erin Taylor as First Impressions Coordinator - the team that greets guests, holds doors, and answers first-time-visitor questions on a Sunday morning.
A Building, a Camp, and a Podcast
The church gathers at 20123 Gravel Road, Joplin, Missouri 64801, with directions that send visitors from either Highway 171 or Highway 249 to the Carterville exit, northwest onto the overpass, then northeast onto North Outer Road West. Camp CYOKAMO sits eight miles away in Alba, Missouri, and is a year-round ministry of the church used for summer camps, work days, retreats, and rentals. The Carterville Christian Church podcast streams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and the church's website acts as a one-stop hub for the weekly worship set list, sermon notes, podcasts, a baptism booklet, the giving portal, the life group sign-ups, the staff directory, and the prayer wall - all of the ongoing rhythms of a single, locally rooted congregation.