Like I’ve Never Seen It Before

God has blessed our church in the past but I’ve never seen anything like this!

Over the past few months we have seen God’s blessings poured out over our church as never before. I felt led to share with you a few of the blessings we are seeing right now!

1. Extreme Numerical Growth

Over the past 9 years we have seen some measured growth in our attendance, but I’ve never seen this many new people in such a short amount of time. Our current Membership Class (Foundation 101) currently has over 40 people registered for this six-week session. It’s amazing. Every week we are seeing 1st time guests who are being brought by our church members and an extraordinary amount of those guests are returning for a 2nd and 3rd time. Since going to 3 services about 9 months ago we have seen God bring more people than ever before. More people have been saved and baptized in the last 5 months than at any other period in our church’s history. This is an amazing time to be part of Southern Hills.

2. New Generation of Leaders
With all of this growth comes the necessity of new volunteers and new ministry leaders. I am probably more encouraged about this part than any other. Over the past few weeks and throughout the summer I am meeting with men and women of our church that have been saved, baptized, or returned to the Lord through the ministry of SHBC. I discuss with these amazing men and women the role of leadership and the responsibility of church ministry. I have never seen so many genuine, godly, gracious, and willing people respond to ministry opportunity. I feel as if God is not only bringing us more people, but that He is providing a new generation of leaders who will be able to lead these new converts into the years ahead! Man, I am so pumped up right now!

3. Thriving Student Ministry

This past Wednesday Night we held our very 1st SSKO. Steven and Becky Miller saw 94 teenagers in attendance. What?!?! How is this possible? That’s not a bunch of youth workers and 60 teenagers. That is 94 teenagers! The spirit of our youth group is thriving, passionate, pure, and powerful. So many of these amazing teens invited friends for whom they are concerned. You see, they want everyone to know about Jesus. This is amazing!

4. Spiritual Breakthroughs
Through the sermon series Baggage we have seen so many amazing spiritual breakthroughs like never before. Months ago when the Holy Spirit led me to prepare a Biblical study of emotional hangups I was concerned to say the least. But throughout these past 5 weeks we have seen God’s Holy Spirit reveal many incredible truths through the study of His Word. Through counseling, emails, phone calls, and text messages I have seen God free people from guilt, restore people through forgiveness, draw close to God through understanding the indwelling power of the Spirit. These past few months have truly been a season of spiritual breakthroughs.
The Summer Missionary (pastoral interns) will be here next week! I can’t wait until the arrive. These guys always bring fresh life and excitement into our church. During the course of 10 weeks we will see them reach 40,000 homes with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, preach Bible sermons to our people, lead C&C activities, lead Youth Activities, and help our children’s ministry.

On June 1, I will begin our New Sermon Series: Hot Topics. We will be discussing Racism, The Middle East, Alcohol, and Sexuality all from a Biblical perspective. These highly controversial topics will be fascinating to study as we dig deeply into the Word of God and seek out God’s opinion on today’s biggest questions.

I have to say, SHBC has always been an amazing place, but I’ve never seen it like this before. This place is awesome!