We did vote to start, we have been admitted into a local association, and we finally picked a name.
We are Hope Fellowship, a Southern Baptist Church.
To pick the name we opened it up for suggestions, and like everything else so far, a common thread appeared. Well over half of the suggestions contained the word "fellowship", and the next most mentioned word was "hope". It wasn't a small number. Since church people are notorious for not being able to harmoniously pick a carpet color, it is kind of a small miracle that we managed to pick a name so easily. To go with our new name, we picked this verse from Psalms
Next, we have a mission statement. Typically speaking, church mission statements can get kind of wordy and a bit hard to follow. Instead, we wanted something that boiled it down to what it is that the church needs to be about. This is what we got.
That's it. The whole thing. Love God, others, and the lost. All the work that the church needs to do falls under one. or more, of those things.
Our newest fun little line up has been location. It isn't easy to find a place that can function as a church especially when you have barely a months worth of history to your name. After a bunch calls and several scouting trips, we found a local school that could rent to us. It wasn't the first place on our list. In fact, I think it was at the bottom of the list we started with. That's where God comes in again. This school is in a corner of the county that has a ton of neighborhoods but no churches. They have struggled to get sponsors for the school because it isn't near businesses. Compared to the other schools in the area, their extras budget is very low. They need us, just like we need them. The principal is a former preacher's kid herself, and beyond thrilled to be having a church lease space. Once again, everything fell into place better than we planned.
It hasn't all been sunshine and roses. Starting a church is hard. We've had friends who needed to step away. We've hit roadblocks. Patience and flexibility tested. But, at the end of each day, hope and unity have continued to win out.
