I would like to share in a series of short blogs some of the amazing ways I personally think God has worked in our fellowship to bring us to a multi-site approach to ministry. I will try to present them in a chronological order so that you can get a sense of the timeline of these events in case you’re unfamiliar with our story.But first, let me try to explain the title for this blog: “Sovereignty and Sensitivity”. This title comes from Acts 16:6-10. In these verses Luke describes the beginning of the second missionary journey for Paul and his companions. The text shows God’s providential sovereignty as He led His missionary team by closing some doors and opening others (Acts 16:6, 7, 9-10), and it also reveals how the Lord’s servants needed to be sensitive to God’s direction by “concluding that God had called [them] to preach the gospel to [those in Macedonia]” (Acts 16:10b, NIV).
This is exactly how I sense the Lord has led us on our multi-site journey. I believe we can look back and see God’s sovereignty displayed at each bend in the road, and yet we still had to be sensitive to the Lord’s leadership. We had to step out in faith and follow Him with sensitivity as He opened doors in His sovereignty.
So let’s begin at the beginning...
Years ago, before I transitioned into the pastoral role at Woodland Park Baptist Church (WPBC), our fellowship voted to sponsor a new Church plant, Stillwater Baptist Church, on the north shore in the Covington/Mandeville area. After some time and various circumstances (such as Hurricane Katrina), Stillwater decided to relocate to Hammond. They met in our building for a while on Saturday nights, and then we co-signed a loan for them so they could secure a building in our city for Sunday morning services.
It seemed in no time at all God blessed Stillwater, the Church grew, and they needed a larger facility which God provided. Now, WPBC had a decision to make: Either we could try to sell Stillwater’s building, or we could use it for our ministry in some way.
Well, our college ministry at the time was meeting in a home and bursting at the seams. So we chose to move our Rise Collegiate Ministry to this building, set it up in a coffee house type format called “Nations Community and Coffee House”, and continue our college ministry from this location.
Here was the first glimpse of a multi-site approach to ministry, but no one at WPBC was thinking in this way. In fact, I don’t think I had even heard of a “multi-site” strategy for ministry at this point! Nevertheless, the idea seemed attractive to me and to others of having a ministry in another part of our city which would allow us to have a different expression of our same mission in order to reach more people with the Gospel.
Quite some time later when our staff learned about a multi-site approach to ministry and spent considerable time talking about this strategy, I came to see our Nations location as God working “ahead” of us to show us what a multi-site ministry could look like for WPBC. Essentially then when we first decided as a fellowship to officially call our Nations location a “multi-site" campus, I felt as though we were simply walking through the door God had already opened quite some time before. To borrow a classic Experiencing God concept: We were basically "joining God" in His work because He was already blessing our Rise Collegiate Ministry and the Nations location with growth. We were being sensitive to God's sovereignty!
However, when we decided as a fellowship in January 2011 to formally proceed with our Nations location as our first multi-site campus, no one really anticipated what God was about ready to do a short 23 ½ hours later. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself because this is the next part of the story…
Blessings!
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