Dear Hope Community Church,
It has truly been a joy for me to spend some dedicated time over the past few months diving deep into the history of Hope Community Church as we prepare for its 25th anniversary. I’m so honored to be a part of such a great tradition of life, love, service, discipleship, mission, and well, hope! God has moved through this community in such incredible ways over the last two and a half decades.
In my three and a half years in Southwest Michigan with my family, we have seen God’s continued faithfulness to our congregation. We continue to see growth across all of our ministry areas, including the kids’ ministry more than doubling in the last 2 years! We have had doors open up for great ministry partnerships. We have been able to walk alongside ministries like Spero House with events like Weenie Wednesday, and even have weekly volunteers from Hope who partner there. We are able to love and serve families every holiday season with Thanksgiving meals being delivered, and with the Wonderland Christmas Toy Store. We have been able to offer vital services to our community by hosting the YMCA, hosting free Community COVID Testing, providing funeral meals for dozens of families, many of whom don’t have any other place to go for those dinners. It seems each and every month, God opens up more doors for us to continue to partner with and love our community well. And we believe God has SO MUCH MORE!
We have made the choice as a church to “get the anchor out of the water” by paying off our facility debt.
We know that as we continue to do great ministry in our community even still, God is calling us to even greater things through the power of His Spirit.
We chose the theme Hope Again to express the twofold idea that we believe God is first calling us to learn to Hope Again! The last few years have been fraught with challenges and bad news. It seems that the world today has been dedicated to snuffing out Hope. Yet we believe that God is still the God of miracles, His Spirit still moves. We believe God is calling us to Hope Again and believe BIG things will happen through the power of God’s Spirit.
Secondly, we believe God is calling us to become Hope Again. To recapture the dream that started this congregation. To give away more than we keep for ourselves. To be fully devoted to loving the people of this city well. To make our community look more like the Kingdom of Heaven through love and service to those around us. I’m SO EXCITED for what’s ahead!
So let’s devote ourselves to prayer and to seeking God’s face as He calls us to Hope Again.
I love you Hope,
Pastor Nathanael Lyon