Senior Pastor Josh Moody

Josh Moody

The heart of all my ministry for the last twenty years or more has been to call people to center their lives on God. I am more convinced than ever of the timeliness and timelessness of that gospel message. In the extraordinary oncein-a-generation storm that we have endured this last year, we have relied on Christ, and centered our lives on him and his Word. He has been our rock.

This year we saw our largest ever membership class. In the midst of a pandemic, we are launching another church plant. We concluded a capital campaign to pay down debt. The elders have also finished an extensive, prayerful consideration of the state of the church and where we are going and how we are going to get there. As a result, we have come up with five new initiatives. They are as follows:

PATHWAY

We will develop a simple invitational pathway for our gospel ministries: Discover Jesus, Grow in Your Faith and Impact the World. We will communicate that pathway through launching a new website by May 16, 2021.

▸ Rationale: After consultation with a Christian communications company and surveying the neighborhood, we have discovered that we need to present the distinctive gospel ministry opportunity of College Church more clearly and invitationally to the surrounding community.

HOSPITALITY

We will mobilize our care, encouragement and connection with each other through an increased emphasis on mutually loving and welcoming hospitality as a community.

▸ Rationale: After conversations with key ministry leaders, it is apparent we need to increase connectivity between members and attenders of the church through mutually loving and caring hospitality.

DISCIPLESHIP

We will elevate biblically rigorous and practical discipleship by implementing a coherent discipleship curriculum across the whole church, including Adult Communities and small groups, by the fall of 2021.

▸ Rationale: After a churchwide discipleship survey, we have ascertained a growing need for more rigorous and practical discipleship that is coherently coordinated across both small and large groups.

CROSSINGS

We will increasingly use our campus space for reaching the community by utilizing the Crossings as basic open space for gathering ministries by the fall of 2022, while continuing to hold a flexible approach to our other rental properties over the long term as they cash flow.

▸ Rationale: After the Site and Facilities Committee’s extensive work surveying the ministry pinch points, it is apparent that we need to develop our ministry space, and we will target the Crossings space.

PLANTING

We will leverage the church’s history of church planting, training programs and connections across the country and world by committing to planting multiple new churches by 2030.

▸ Rationale: After surveying our church plants, and hearing from our latest church plant pastor, we think it is a good use of our strengths as a church to lean into new church planting.

Our vision and our mission are the same— centered on God and his gospel, proclaiming Christ. This year, while it has been difficult to gather in person, we have seen a massive extension of our online presence. Going to church is not the same as ordering pizza; we need to gather in person. But the online presence is a huge mission field. Martin Luther said that the printing press was God’s greatest gift. The Reformation was fueled by a massive popular distribution of pamphlets that dramatized the gospel for the people. Similarly, the internet, with all its negative consequences, is also a huge mission field. And we are seeing a big impact in our online mission. You will read elsewhere in this report how God Centered Life is also extending the preaching outside the walls of College Church to many thousands of people around the globe through its radio and media ministry.

So, our rock is Christ, and he has been faithful to his people. At the same time, the storm has been real. I have been personally devastated by the rancor and divisiveness in larger evangelicalism and grateful for the united spirit we enjoy. But we cannot take that for granted. We must make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Remember College Church’s old motto: in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.

I want to thank my pastoral staff and support staff team. Especially in the first six months of the pandemic, many of these individuals have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the church moving forward. I have been saying to them that in years to come we will have this bond: we were there in that year of COVID at College Church. I extend the same thanks to the band of brothers and sisters who serve as volunteers to make all the ministries work so well.

I also want to thank the Council of Elders, and especially Mark Taylor, the chair. This is now the third year he has chaired the Council. His experience and expertise have been a remarkable provision from God during this extraordinarily demanding year.

So, College Church, now is not the time to withdraw or retreat and fear. Now is the time to remember our rock. How big is your God?