ABOUT
Charlie Mitchell
Charlie Mitchell has spent more than 20 years planting churches, developing leaders, and building structures that help the Church thrive in the hardest places.
Teaching Pastor · Church Planter · Author · Soul Care Advocate · Southwest Florida
THE SOIL
Charlie Mitchell was born in Key West, Florida, the son of a shrimper. His father’s people came from Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina, a sea island outside of Charleston steeped in Gullah Geechee history and culture. His mother grew up sharecropping. These are not incidental details. They are the root system beneath everything Charlie has built.
He grew up in Harlem Heights, a neighborhood in Fort Myers, Southwest Florida. His father died when Charlie was 13 years old. That loss cracked something open. Two years later, at 15, Charlie came to faith.
He was raised in a Black Church of God in Christ congregation, all rhythm, fire, and community. After his father’s death, his mother moved the family to First Assembly of God in Fort Myers, one of the region’s largest suburban megachurches at that time. For a young Black kid from Harlem Heights, that transition was both jarring and formative. He learned to navigate evangelical culture without losing himself and gained ministry experience on a scale most young leaders never see. It gave him his range.
When Charlie was in his early twenties, his mother died suddenly of a heart attack. He was left to raise his younger brother and sister. The housing market collapsed in 2008, and Charlie, now a young husband with Erin, raising siblings in the middle of the Southwest Florida bubble burst, did what he had to do. He worked construction. He did a stint as a pool plumber. He served as a site supervisor for Habitat for Humanity across Lee and Hendry counties. He came back to Harlem Heights, to the neighborhood that made him, and figured out the next step.
His oldest sister died in 2016. If you want to understand why Charlie Mitchell cares so deeply about the inner lives of leaders, why soul care is not a program to him but a survival strategy, the losses alone tell most of the story.
THE FORMATION
From 2001 to 2003, Charlie lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, studying missions and biblical studies at the Copenhagen International Master’s Commission. Spending two years inside a culture that was neither his nor the urban American context he’d eventually serve gave him something most ministry leaders never develop: genuine cross-cultural fluency. It is a significant part of why he can move across race, class, and culture without performing or code-switching; he has actually lived outside his own frame of reference.
Back in Florida, Charlie joined the team at Providence Church in Lehigh Acres as missions pastor and teaching team member. In 2013, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist elder and pastor. But the trajectory was pulling him toward something more complex.
From April 2015 to December 2016, Charlie completed the Epiphany Fellowship Urban Church Planting Residency in Camden, New Jersey, under the leadership of Dr. Doug Logan and Dr. Eric Mason. Camden is not a training ground for the faint-hearted. During that season, Charlie was ordained again, this time in a Black-led, inner-city urban church plant. Two ordinations, two worlds, one man. That double credentialing is not a footnote. It is the clearest picture of who he is.
Baltimore
In 2016, Charlie began raising funds, building relationships, and preaching the vision for Epiphany Church of Baltimore, traveling the country sharing the call before a single Sunday had been held. The church became official in Maryland in 2017. That same year, he was diagnosed with kidney disease.
What followed was one of the most clarifying crucibles a leader can face: planting and shepherding a church in one of Baltimore’s most demanding urban contexts while his own body was in slow decline. The question that became the seed of Maroon House was born in those years: how do you sustain your soul when the work is consuming you and the body is failing you at the same time?
In December 2022, Charlie architected one of the rarer things in church life: a genuine merger. Epiphany Church and Hope Church came together not to absorb one into the other, but to birth something new, Hopeville. The church launched in December 2022 and continues to meet at Stadium School in Baltimore, where it is led by Pastor Joshua Symonette today. Charlie served in a teaching and spiritual formation role through June 2024, and considers Hopeville the natural evolution of Epiphany, from a church in a neighborhood to a church for a city.
It is worth noting what happened in between. When COVID hit in 2020 and forced churches off their Sunday morning footing, Charlie did not slow down; he built. What emerged was a full discipleship ecosystem designed to facilitate spiritual formation across Baltimore and beyond, reaching people the Sunday gathering model had never touched. The pandemic did not interrupt the mission. It expanded it.
On March 29, 2023, Charlie received a kidney transplant after six years of leading through physical decline. His donor’s name is Brandy. He continued serving at Hopeville through his recovery. In January 2024, he took on a 12-week interim pastoral role at Gallery Church in Baltimore, serving two churches simultaneously in his final season in the city. In September 2024, Charlie made the move back to Southwest Florida, closing his Baltimore chapter and coming home.
The Return
Coming back to Southwest Florida was not a retreat. It was a homecoming with a mission.
In September 2024, Charlie joined Summit Church in Southwest Florida as a Teaching Pastor, bringing over two decades of urban ministry, preaching, and leadership formation to a new context. He also serves as the Southwest Florida Catalyst for Church United, a national network focused on mobilizing pastors and churches toward strategic, collective community impact.
He founded Maroon House, an urban ministry collective offering soul care coaching, cohort experiences, and practical resources for urban church planters and ministry leaders. Maroon House is the distillation of everything Charlie learned the hard way — about burnout, about loss, about planting in hard soil, about what the inner life of a leader actually needs to survive and sustain the work.
The shrimper’s son from Key West is back in Southwest Florida. This time, he’s building something that will outlast him.
Writing & Content
Charlie is the author of multiple books for urban church leaders and ministry practitioners, including From Nice to Known, The Planter in Gotham, and the Soul Care Mixtape series, candid, grounded resources for the inner life of Black male ministry leaders. He writes for urban church leaders through Deep Cutz, his Substack publication.
He is the creator and host of the Dope Daily Audio Bible, a devotional audio series with more than 500 episodes and over 16,000 downloads, designed to make Scripture accessible and practical for everyday life.
He is currently writing Gators and Gold Teeth, a forthcoming ethnographic memoir exploring what it meant to grow up as a Black boy in Southwest Florida, a story rooted in Key West shrimping boats, Harlem Heights streets, and the particular cultural world of Black life in a region that rarely gets this kind of attention.
Speaking
Charlie speaks to pastors, church planters, ministry leaders, and organizations on topics including urban church planting, soul care, courageous leadership, and the intersection of faith and culture. He has spoken at:
Epiphany Fellowship — Philadelphia and Brooklyn
Thriving Conference — Philadelphia (panel)
Times 12 / Sent Network — pastor and church planter training
Backstage Soul Care Conference
Spanish River Church
Numerous churches and pastor networks across the United States
Credentials & Training
Master of Arts in Church Planting — Capital Seminary
Certified Primal Question Coach
Certified City to City Church Planter Coach
Ordained, Urban Church — Epiphany Fellowship, Camden, NJ
Epiphany Fellowship Urban Church Planting Residency — Camden, NJ (under Dr. Doug Logan and Dr. Eric Mason)
Ordained, Southern Baptist — Providence Church, Lehigh Acres, FL (2013)
Church Planting Intern — Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, FL
Ministry Assistant — First Assembly of God, Fort Myers, FL
Copenhagen International Masters Commission — Copenhagen, Denmark (Missions & Biblical Studies)
Charlie lives in Southwest Florida with his wife, Erin. He walks every day, a practice born out of his health journey in 2020 that has become one of his most consistent spiritual disciplines.
Connect With Charlie’s Work
Maroon House — Soul care for urban church planters
Deep Cutz on Substack — Long-form writing on ministry, culture, and the inner life
Dope Daily Audio Bible — 500+ episodes of daily Scripture and reflection
Books — Urban ministry and soul care resources on Amazon
Church United SWFL — Pastoral network for Southwest Florida ministry leaders
Speaking Inquiries — Contact for church, conference, and network speaking