Porter and his wife Cathy were born and raised in Northern Virginia. They went away to college, married, and spent 20 years trying to stay away from the DC area. During that time, Porter went to law school at the University of South Carolina and began serving as a prosecutor in the Marine Corps. It was during that time that the Lord led Porter and Cathy to join a church plant in South Carolina. There they experienced the sweet fellowship of worshiping and serving with other people who were all on the common mission to see the Kingdom of God grow.
It was there that Porter felt called to go to seminary. So, after a deployment to Iraq and a tour teaching International and Operational Law at the Army JAG School, the Lord led the Harlow family back to the D.C. area so Porter could work at the Pentagon while taking classes at Reformed Theological Seminary’s Washington, D.C., campus. Upon returning to the D.C. area, they were astonished to see all that the Lord had done to plant new churches since they last lived here. That only encouraged them to be used to plant more churches in Fairfax County and see more people come to know Christ as their Lord.
Seeds for the church were planted with a kick-off picnic at Burke Lake Park in August 2018, followed by a Bible study in the Harlow’s basement from the fall of 2018 through the spring of 2019 that helped gather a group of core families. We began worship services as a church the first Sunday of June 2019 at Terra Centre Elementary School, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to move to other facilities because school facilities were closed. By God’s providence, however, we grew rapidly during COVID-19, and particularized as a self-sustaining church in the PCA in March 2021. We returned to Terra Centre Elementary School the first Sunday in June 2022, where we have been worshipping ever since.
