Our City

“Asheville is a cultural mecca of independent breweries, art studios, and five-star restaurants… the perks of civilization amid remote natural beauty,” writes U.S. News, which recently ranked it among the top ten cities in the U.S. for quality of life. Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville had the second-highest net move-in rate in the country in 2024—drawing new residents from across the nation. With just over 100,000 residents and a growing metro of nearly 400,000, it attracts creatives, remote workers (Asheville ranks second in the U.S. cities for remote professionals), entrepreneurs, and spiritual seekers in search of beauty, pace, and purpose.

Often called the “Portland of the South,” Asheville pulses with artistic energy and cultural vitality. It celebrates innovation and welcomes difference—progressive, idealistic, and independent at its core. Tourism plays a central role in the city’s identity, fueling nearly $3 billion in annual visitor spending and drawing over 13 million people in 2023. This steady influx supports thousands of jobs and sustains a thriving hospitality scene—but it also brings tension. Asheville now has the highest cost of living in North Carolina, driven in part by the growth of short-term rentals, which have pushed up housing prices and displaced long-time residents. Wage disparities and strained infrastructure continue to widen the gap between those who benefit from tourism and those who are being priced out by it.

These challenges were laid bare in late 2024, when Hurricane Helene swept through the region—crippling power and water systems, damaging roads, and bringing much of the local economy to a halt. Visitor spending dropped sharply, and many beloved businesses closed, some permanently. The slow, uneven recovery exposed just how dependent Asheville has become on its image and appeal—and how fragile that ecosystem truly is. In the aftermath, a deeper conversation has emerged across neighborhoods, council chambers, and coffee shops alike: What kind of city will Asheville become? What vision will guide its rebuilding—not just economically, but communally and culturally?

Although it sits in “Billy Graham’s backyard” and Haywood Avenue once had “more churches per mile than any other street in America,” Asheville today is profoundly post-Christian. Most people here have some form of church in their rearview mirror—many having experienced religion as controlling, exclusionary, or hypocritical. The city’s reputation as the “Sodom of the South” a label reflecting its LGBTQ population—estimated to be 80–90% higher than the national average—signals just how thoroughly it has rejected the conservative religious norms that shaped much of the South. But this rejection hasn’t led to pure secularism. In fact, Asheville is deeply spiritual—what sociologists call post-secular: a culture where institutional religion is dismissed, yet spiritual hunger remains. Tarot, evil eyes trinkets, energy work, yoga, and neo-pagan mysticism are woven into the city’s search for transcendence without the trappings of organized faith.

At the same time, Asheville is marked by deep political polarization. Beneath its progressive ideals and reparative efforts lie stark divisions—it remains the second whitest city in North Carolina and grows whiter each year. It’s a pressure cooker of progressive energy surrounded by deeply conservative counties, creating sharp cultural tensions and often political gridlock.

In this landscape, the church is often viewed either as an extension of right-wing politics or dismissed entirely as oppressive and outdated. Any new church must walk a narrow road—bold enough to speak truth, humble enough to listen, and rooted enough to hold people together in a fragmented age.

In the last decade, one local pastor was able to count more than two dozen church plants have failed here. This has lead to the common refrain that Asheville is where church plants go to die. But we believe the difficulty of the soil is the very reason for hope. It means the harvest, when it comes, will be real. We seek to learn from past attempts while prayerfully contending for a fresh work of God in this city.