Ron’s Story

It began, as many of God’s greatest works do, with almost nothing — just a note taped to a front door in New Mexico.

“Call me,” it said.

When Ron Sellers and his family picked up the phone to call Charlie Middlebrook, they couldn’t have imagined where that simple message would lead. The conversation that followed would uproot their family of six, pulling them from comfort and planting them deep in the heart of Houston.

“We moved with a little faith, called to the least of these and a diversity of people,” Ron recalled with a quiet laugh. “Just a handful of people and no real plan for a building, no savings, no certainty — but we trusted that God had plans bigger than ours.”

That trust became the seed from which the Impact Houston Church of Christ was born — a church that began not with property or programs, but with people. On that first Sunday in January 1987, Ron picked up a few women and children from a local shelter, among them a young mother named Tina and her infant.

Tina, one of the first to follow Jesus through God’s work at Impact, later placed her baby in the arms of a young woman from the church, asking her to raise the child in a way she could not.

That encounter — raw, human, and holy — set the tone for everything that followed.

Ron’s days quickly filled with serving the least of these. Bread runs to apartments. Worship in borrowed gyms and community centers. Baptisms in horse troughs and swimming pools. “We just used whatever we had,” Ron said. “There wasn’t much, but it was enough.”

Impact’s early days were humble and unpolished—no facilities, just borrowed spaces and willing hearts. “We didn’t want to be a church centered on a building,” Ron said. “We wanted to be a church called out to serve.”

And serve they did. What began with a few families grew into a network of volunteers, teachers, and mentors. An outdoor vacation Bible school became the foundation for children’s programs that now reach thousands. A gift of time and sparse resources to a daycare for children of homeless parents launched a homeless ministry that has seen the transformation of multitudes.

Every milestone traces back to small acts of obedience—a loaf of bread delivered, a van donated, a single child cared for. Each time, God multiplied what little they had, turning scarcity into abundance.

Nearly forty years later, Ron still shakes his head at the miracle of it all. “We thought we were giving God so little,” he said, “but He just kept doing more.”

Maybe that’s the lesson for all of us: God doesn’t ask for much—only that we give what we have and let Him multiply it.

That’s how God writes His best stories.