I was amazed and encouraged to watch the video below and be reminded how God has done a great work at Mercy Hill Church, one of the Summit’s 25 North American church plants and number 27 on Outreach magazine’s list of the 100 fastest-growing churches in America. In 2012 our church sent a launch team of 40 people, including Pastor Andrew Hopper and his family, to Greensboro, North Carolina, and by their second anniversary, the church that started by meeting outside at a local park had 1,000 people at weekend services. They went multisite on their fourth birthday and are now celebrating 500 baptisms in five years and more than 2,000 in average attendance.
But we know that numbers are only a sign of God’s grace. One of their launch team members said it well: “The most encouraging thing is not high attendance numbers; it’s life change—people walking from death to life …. The tendency for me is to look at what God has done at Mercy Hill and want to settle, but I think that’s selling our mighty God short.”
That same member took a job painting houses in Greensboro after leaving his career behind in Raleigh-Durham. Sacrifice like that is what unlocks the power of God, and I pray that Mercy Hill would never lose their hunger to see many more of the million people in the Triad come to saving faith. We don’t trust in great locations or the best strategies. We believe and trust that the gospel is the power of salvation for all who believe and that God will pour out even more grace on Mercy Hill in the years to come.
