Grace Hills had its first meeting a year ago and launched six months ago. We’re in our fourth location and we’ve baptized 26 people this year. We average anywhere from 120 to 160 in our Sunday morning worship attendance, depending on how many families are on vacation (it’s the summer thing).
As we look toward the fall of 2012 and the start of the school year, I’m already asking God what His next steps for us will be. I want to lead us to the next level, but what exactly is the “next level?” Here are some prayers that are weighing on my heart as I write this…
- We need a better spot to serve as our “home base.” The theater has been great and I’ve written about its benefits, but what we would really love to find is a 12,000 +/- square foot blank canvas, close to the I-540 corridor between Bentonville and Rogers for less than $6,000 per month.
- While we’d like a more accommodating space, we also want to remain flexible, portable, and lean in our approach to ministry. In other words, we don’t want our vision to be shaped by space, geography, debt, or the “comfort” of owning assets.
- We want to triple our number of Grace Groups so that as many people as possible are involved in a small group community. This is how we handle pastoral care, this is where real growth happens, and this is how we will really multiply to reach northwest Arkansas.
- We want to love and serve northwest Arkansas. We’re utilizing a big weekend called We Love NWA weekend to help people test the waters of community outreach, but we want this to merely be an introduction to a lifestyle of missional living. Ultimately, we want the community to count on us as a go-to source when there’s a need we can meet.
- We want to multiply! That is, we want to be directly involved in the planting of other churches locally, regionally, and internationally. And we don’t want to wait until we’re “big enough” (an ever-elusive target). We’d like to raise up and send out leaders for the harvest now!
So pray with us. If you have a lead on a meeting space that fits the description above, let me know. If you want to partner with us to plant more churches, let me know. And if you’re local to northwest Arkansas and want to know what Grace Hills is all about, let me know!