Huntersville Herald Online

“It wasn’t a complete surprise,” says McGalliard, a long-time Huntersville resident who moved to Davidson’s River Run community several years ago, “but still, I was shocked. I mean, who wouldn’t be?”

Fortunately, McGalliard had a plan. Or, to look at it another way, God had a plan for McGalliard, …

A sub-prime sign

Okay. I know what some of you are saying now, eyeballs a-rolling. Here we go again with another one of those God-told-me-to-do-it stories. That’s fine. A little skepticism is a good thing. But to be honest, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in God, or in God working in mysterious ways or not, because Charles McGalliard does believe it and this is his life we’re talking about. The 51-year-old father of two grown sons saw the sudden end of his Greenpoint career as just one more sign that he ought to be doing something else.

Like missionary work.

On the other side of the globe.

McGalliard, a former member of First Baptist Church-Huntersville and a current member of Huntersville’s Lake Forest Church, headed to Nepal this week for the start of a two-month journey that will take him to a half-dozen Asian countries. If all goes well, that will be the start of a long-term commitment as the Asian and African trainer/recruiter for Charlotte-based CSO International, an 11-year-old ministry that attempts to help Christian churches worldwide spread the word through sports. Among other things McGalliard will be doing is help Christians start and grow churches in places where they aren’t really welcome, where he’s never been before, and where he doesn’t speak the language.

“It’s going to be an adventure,” says McGalliard, “but it’s where I believe I’m supposed to be.”

CSO began in 1996 when Bob Dyar, a corporate exec-turned-minister in Charlotte, decided to formalize a program of sports evangelism that he’d helped put together at several Charlotte-area churches. The organization’s acronym originally stood for Carolina Sports Outreach, ��but has morphed several times and now doesn’t stand for anything, says Dyar, who is also the more or less official chaplain for Huntersville-based Joe Gibbs Racing. CSO has about 10 employees and is a non-profit, supported solely by donations. Most of the donations are pulled in by the employees themselves.

McGalliard says Dyar gave him “a generous salary … and then told me I had to raise it all myself.” He’ll start working on that project when he gets home later this fall.

The CSO concept is simple but still difficult to explain. It’s based on the tried-and-true idea that one of the best ways to bring people to a church — to Christ in the Christian vernacular — is to establish a connection through some common bond. Dyar, a former collegiate golfer, says sports offer one of the widest channels for such relational work.

“What surveys tell us is that sports is a connection for something like 90 percent of our culture around the world,” says Dyar. “The only thing that is a greater common denominator is music. So (sports) is a natural. You can really get to know someone through sports.”

CSO doesn’t develop those grassroots programs directly — “we’re not out there teaching soccer,” says Dyar — but instead teaches other leaders how to use organized sports as a tool. Again, it is not a new or complicated concept, but Dyar and company have created a ready-made program with “about 20 principles that we think translate across all boundaries.

“And it is surprising how many people don’t understand how to do it,” he says.

Although CSO has a sports chaplaincy training program and ties to famous professional athletes and coaches (Joe Gibbs, for example), Dyar says it has assiduously eschewed “jocks” as its missionaries.

“It’s helpful to have people who understand sports and enjoy it,” says Dyar, “but you really don’t want the person who is enamored of it. A normal guy who feels led to this — someone like Charles — is a much better choice.”

No doubts

In hindsight, McGalliard says his journey into mission work began several years before his layoff offered him the opportunity. Because his company out-sourced some work to India (of course), McGalliard went on a business trip there several years ago, which piqued his interest in that place. A year or so ago, he went on a mission trip to India with Steve Brumm, a friend from church. That led to a project to interview ministers from China as would-be leaders for Christian church start-ups there. And both those trips produced a connection with Dyar, who, as an experienced overseas evangelist, offered support for those endeavors.

McGalliard remembers some very quick briefings with the ultra-busy Dyar, who always seemed to be on the phone, or talking with someone in person, about CSO business. What little McGalliard could discern from that bit of eavesdropping excited him.

“I thought ‘man, that sounds like the coolest job in the world,’” he says.

Consequently, when he was laid off at Greenpoint, McGalliard knew what his first step would be: contact Dyar.

The connection was immediate. CSO had a job … well, a mission … that turned McGalliard on. And CSO had some needs that McGalliard could fill.

His initial trip will actually see him work for two different groups. As part of a trip he’d arranged before landing the CSO position, McGalliard and a friend will join a specialized mission group — for security reasons, McGalliard doesn’t want to use the name — on a project in Nepal. After flying to Katmandu, they’ll carry a load of equipment down the Annapurnas Trail to a remote valley. The trek is 70 miles each way. McGalliard is no spring chicken and has a problem knee, but believes he can make it.

After limping out of Nepal, McGalliard will meet Dyar and others from CSO in southeast Asia. They prefer not to reveal just where they are going because in at least some of the countries where they are working, Christian churches face persecution and exist as sort of an “underground.”

Lest CSO’s work seem like spitting into the spiritual wind, it should be noted that the target of McGalliard and others is not the leaders of small, underground churches, but rather the leaders of entire networks of churches. Dyar says one African leader currently under CSO tutelage may have as many as 10,000 churches in a network that he controls or at least influences. Dyar believes the organization may have already helped as many as 30,000 churches on that continent.

“We’re looking to identify those leaders who have networks of 10, 50 or 100 churches or more,” says Dyar. “We’re looking to make a big difference and a guy like Charles is just the kind of person who can do it.”

McGalliard, who agrees with Dyar’s assessment of him as “just a normal guy,” says he realizes he’s stepping out and taking a risk, and isn’t taking his new career lightly.

But he feels the call, he has the unquestioned support of his wife, Phyllis, and, he is a guy who’s used to a little risk.

After all, he used to work in the mortgage business.

Tucker Mitchell is publisher of The Herald. Contact him at 704-766-2100 or by email at tmitchell@huntersvilleherald.com.