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God Moves His Servants

First - the GREAT News! You may remember our last prayer letter outlined the amazing ways God is using grief to draw people to Himself. We are excited to give you the AWESOME news that Lady #3 (from our October letter) is now a follower of Jesus ! In her words, “I feel lighter, I feel fuller than I ever have”. Praising God once again! Next - the SURPRISING News! There was a song that became popular in churches about 20 years ago called “Trust His Heart”. As we were thinking about writing this news, these lyrics came to mind: God is too wise to be mistaken God is too good to be unkind So when you don't understand When you don't see His plan When you can't trace His hand Trust His Heart God is leading us to leave South Holly Church - soon. We will finish our responsibilities here by Christmas, have our farewell dinner and say our goodbyes on January 8, and then be done serving at South Holly Church. This was not in our plan, nor was this our timing, but it is

Praising God!

God uses grief. In fact, God uses LOTS of things to bring others to Himself! We (Rod and Susan) are currently facilitating their 7th full cycle of GriefShare at South Holly. Each cycle is 13 weeks in length, which allows time to get to know each of the participants and walk their grief journey with them. For various reasons, we considered canceling the fall cycle of GriefShare and waiting until January to resume. God did not let us - and here’s why…… Read MORE......  

Faithfulness Matters

 Let us tell you about a guy - we’ll call him “Peter”. Some back story first - In March, the management of our church’s website volleyed back to Susan, who, with her eye for detail, got on the back door of the website to see what needed to be updated, if anything. God showed her that there was a problem with the “Contact Us” card, meaning that there were individuals that had filled it out, hoping and expecting to hear a response from South Holly. The link was broken, so South Holly never received those emails. None of us knew….. The South Holly Staff reached out to those individuals, apologizing for the delay in response, as they had all requested information 2 months earlier. Pastor Shannon sent a message to “Peter”. “Peter” attended Men’s Group the next day, and the week after that, and so on. The next month, his whole family came for Easter, and they continue to come. “Peter” actually showed up to help with set up that Easter morning - before they had ever attended a Morning Worshi

TEN in TEN

Planting 10 churches in 10 years sounds pretty amazing, especially for a church that has just reached about 100 in attendance, but that’s the plan. Our lead pastor of 2 years, Shannon Popp, has a heart for planting churches, and with some ABWE help, we are on track to plant a church by Easter of 2023. The pastor for the first church plant, Table Fellowship Church, is currently South Holly’s Worship Leader, Pastor Arick Graham and his wife, Rachel. We are working hard at growing South Holly, developing the processes to prepare not only for our growth but also for the sending of a significant percentage of our church families to assist in planting Table Fellowship. Additionally, a fellowship of Telegu-speaking families from India are using South Holly as their church home location. They have their own pastor, who has recently joined South Holly, along with his family, for emigration reasons. They will at some point plant their own church in the community near us, which makes another chur

Meet Our "People"

  “A” …. is a 25-year-old business professional with a winning, outgoing personality and with whom Rod has developed a good friendship. “A” owns his own business and has a background in marketing. Unless God changes his path, we fully expect him to be a millionaire at a young age. He is that good at what he does, which makes him the perfect person to assist Rod in his plan to present the Gospel to one million hearers. “S” …. is a 50-something woman who Rod and Susan met through GriefShare. Susan continues to pour into her life, meeting her for lunches. While she was quite open to hearing about Christ for a time, she is now more resistant to the possibility of a relationship with Christ. Still, God continues to place this woman on Susan’s heart, and their relationship continues to deepen. “G” …. is a 21-year-old intern at South Holly. “G” has an awesome testimony of how God turned his life around in a very dramatic fashion. He not only interns with Pastor Shannon, he is Rod’s “ri

To Reach One Million

"The Gospel in front of one million people" - that is the desire as expressed by Pastor Popp, our lead pastor at South Holly Church. Please remember that although South Holly has grown and has made huge strides in the last year, it is still relatively small, with an average attendance of 76.5 people per Sunday in the month of February. But rushing in where angels fear to tread, I (Rod) put together a “brainstorming session” on how to reach one million people - and not just touches - but presenting the Gospel to one million people. After collecting many ideas from the eight of us in attendance, we categorized them into one of four quadrants representing differing levels of “Value” and “Do-ability”. Taking these categorized ideas, and looking at skill-sets as well as the church calendar, we now have a preliminary sequence of Action Items that are ranked as high value and high do-ability. Here’s the ringer, a few days before the Brainstorming Session, I was chatting with

Meet Our Friend "S"

Rod and I met S through a South Holly Church member who knew she had recently lost her mother. At our first encounter with S, we knew she was struggling – a lot – in her grief, but also recognized that she did not know the only One who could truly heal her grief, and that’s Jesus. Within the first couple of weeks, I offered to meet with S for coffee – which we did. I just listened. I asked if she’d like to meet again, which she accepted, and we met for lunch. I just listened. That grew into meeting S for lunch every Tuesday, which we continue to do. I still listen WAY more than I talk. As I listened to her story, she told me she went to Catholic school all throughout her life. She didn’t “get” religion class and was so frustrating to the nuns that they told her, “You are doomed to hell”, kicked her out of religion class and told her to work in the kitchen instead. She became very adept in the kitchen tasks as she apparently spent lots of time there - instead of in religion cla