A Pastor’s Son Builds a Church of His Own

As the son of the man who leads one of the most influential Black churches in the country, Rev. Joshua Thomas spent years avoiding the call to ministry. It’s not that he didn’t love the church; he just preferred to stay behind the scenes: making sure the technology, like the audio and lighting, worked when it was supposed to. 

“Growing up in a pastor’s family, it was definitely not my dream” to stand at the pulpit, says Thomas, whose father, Bishop Walter Scott Thomas Sr., is pastor emeritus of Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church, and his brother, Dr. Walter Scott Thomas Jr., is the senior pastor. “I did not want to be a pastor.”

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But God, he says, had other plans.  

After preaching his first sermon in 2008 and later serving in multiple ministry roles, Thomas heeded the pastoral call. Today, four years into senior pastoral leadership, he has launched Freedom Church in metro Atlanta — a new, fast-growing congregation that reflects both the lessons of his upbringing and his own vision for ministry.

“I will forever be unapologetically a son of New Psalmist,” he says. “New Psalmist is in my DNA. When God blesses you with something so great, the worst thing you can do is pour water on that fire.”

‘We’re Creating Something New’

While the spiritual foundation learned is influencing Thomas’ new venture, he insists the new congregation is not simply recreating the practices he inherited from his father. Instead, Thomas says, it is creating space for people who have struggled to find a spiritual home.

Freedom Church officially launched late last year and has been holding weekly worship services throughout 2026. This fall marks another milestone as Freedom moves from Saturday worship in Lawrenceville, Georgia, to Sunday morning services in nearby Duluth. Every stage, Thomas says, has required faith.

“There’s no handbook on what Freedom is because we’re writing it as we go,” he says. “Every chapter we’re creating something new.”

For Thomas, planting a church begins with one essential question: “It starts with a why. Some people start churches just because they want to say they have a church, and that’s not enough.”

Instead, he said, church planting should fulfill a genuine spiritual need. As he heard from a growing number of people searching for a place to worship, Thomas says he had no choice but to take on the task. “The Lord began speaking, saying, ’That’s what I’m calling you to do.’”

Those early conversations have transformed into a growing congregation.

“People have found us,” Thomas says. “Our sheep know our voice, even if we didn’t know them.”

The name he chose reflects what Thomas hopes visitors experience: a church without boundaries or impediments “that block us from experiencing God.” 

Healing the ‘Church Hurt’

Like most churches, there are policies and organization, but only to help establish “a superhighway where persons can come and move freely in their growth and development and relationship with God,” Thomas says. He believes freedom is especially important for people carrying “church hurt,” or those who have never quite fit traditional church expectations.

“If someone’s a new believer, they can feel safe at Freedom,” he says. “If someone’s been in church for 40 years, they can feel safe. If someone’s looking to heal from past church hurt, they can find their place.”

That emphasis begins before worship ever starts.

“When you come to Freedom for the first time, the first thing you encounter are smiling faces,” Thomas says. “People that are welcoming you there.”

He described a congregation where visitors are not questioned about where they belong or whose seat they occupy.

“You can be fully you and continue to grow,” he says. “You don’t have to put on a front.”

Thomas acknowledges New Psalmist’s influence while recognizing that every congregation develops its own culture.

“We will have dynamic worship expression through praise and worship through the Word,” he says. “Everything we do for God should be done in excellence.”

That includes preaching.

Thomas describes himself as a series preacher whose goal is to send worshippers home hungry to study Scripture beyond Sunday morning. “You can’t grow just in Sunday service,” he says.

Even as Freedom builds its in-person congregation, Thomas is equally committed to those who may never walk through its doors.

Each week, roughly 200 people worship online through the church’s livestream.

“The world has changed,” he says. “There’s no longer this great separation between the physical and the digital space.”

Integrated Mission

Rather than viewing online worship as secondary, Thomas sees it as another mission field.

“We’re looking at different ways to engage more fully the online congregation,” he says. “People now don’t feel as though they’re disconnected if they worship online.”

Thomas believes churches that continue treating digital ministry as an afterthought risk missing an entire generation of online worshippers.

“The faster the church accepts that, the more ministry we can do,” he says.

Freedom has not yet held its first baptism service, but Thomas is carefully planning the congregation’s introduction to the ordinance. He recalled helping redesign New Psalmist’s post-pandemic baptism services by moving them into the main sanctuary, a change that resulted in more than 100 baptisms on Easter Sunday.

For Thomas, Freedom Church is ultimately less about creating another congregation than creating new possibilities for ministry. He remembers leading a church with no kitchen that nevertheless fed more than 500 people because members found another way.

“So often we have the ideas, but we have all the reasons… why we can’t,” he says. “Anything is possible.”

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That conviction now shapes Freedom’s future.

A church without generations of traditions can become a laboratory for fresh ministry, Thomas believes, provided it remains anchored in the gospel. 

The son of one of Baltimore’s best-known pastors is writing his own chapter in Georgia, carrying forward a rich inheritance while making room for people who have long wondered whether there was a place for them at the table.

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