Deer Park Fellowship (DPF) is a church planted by Coastal Church (CC). In early 2019 CC adopted Deer Park Baptist Church (DPBC) to become a Newport News campus site of CC. Both DPBC and CC voted unanimously to do this. DPBC had a history of church planting and has been in our community since the 50s but needed revitalization. CC sent Pastor Joey Tomlinson, who had pastored in various roles at Coastal for many years to pastor this campus.
The 2019 adoption was designed to help strengthen and revitalize the local church with the hopes of it becoming Coastal’s first domestic church plant if the Lord allowed. After two years trending as a healthy campus, the elders of Coastal put forward a vision to the church membership to plant the campus as a confessionally reformed church in Newport News. In February 2021, Coastal Church’s membership voted officially to plant the church as Deer Park Fellowship. The name Deer Park was kept as an ode to the gospel legacy that DPBC had on our Peninsula.