84 :: Moments of Hope Church

 

This morning, I attended Moments of Hope Church here in Charlotte. This place is the new church that David Chadwick has started up (more about him in a bit). This service was held around the basketball court of Providence Day School. When not at Providence Day, the church meets at at the Moments of Hope Farm about fifty minutes outside of Charlotte, right over the border of South Carolina as you head west. They meet at the farm about once a month.

Here are some pictures of worship at the Moments of Hope Church Farm (it looks pretty fun!):

I attended the Providence Day School location with MC. The rest of the family has (we think) seasonal allergies... but since there were many stuffed up noses and a few coughs, we thought it made sense for everyone else to stay home. And I don't like going to church when the whole family isn't going, so we didn't make Freedom House this morning. :(

A bit about the backstory of Moments of Hope Church (henceforth MoHC). 

David Chadwick is the Pastor of MoHC. For many years, David enjoys the status of "Christian famous" here in Charlotte. He took over the property of a ministry that experienced a particularly public decline in the late 1980s and turned it into Forest Hill Church. Forest Hill is an expansive and impressive campus.

David Chadwick played basketball at Chapel Hill in the 1970s for Dean Smith and he was good enough to play pro for a small while, and he is also a solid family man. He felt a calling by the Lord to go into ministry and followed that calling to the helm of Forest Hill. That church flourished for decades, but he left the head pastor role at Forest Hill a few years back. In short, he has and had all of the ingredients that make for a successful pastor in this many-churched city.

I've visited Forest Hill a few times over the years, including as part of my friends Bill and Bethany's daughter's christening ceremony (Forest Hill does not do infant baptisms). Chadwick is great fun to listen to and is clearly the kind of leader who builds a solid following. He also had a little morning snippet on the local AM radio station WBT. I used to hear it often.

Why he left Forest Hill is not clear to me, nor does it matter much. From what I have heard, he found out that some of the church's staff was not tithing and brought that concern to them. There was some fallout from that and he was eventually voted out of his position by the church's board.

I don't know the veracity of this narrative. But this was an important backstory to touch on before proceeding.

If you go back to my eighth church on this journey, it was to Forest Hill (post #92).That was July of last year.

That is some info on the background of David Chadwick, enough on it.

Of note, I didn't see Chadwick preach this morning.

***

With MC in tow, I drove from our home to Providence Day School. It was about five minutes away. When we got there, we met the women who were overseeing the child care, where we learned they only provide child care for children up to three. As a result, MC was with me the whole service. She was coloring during service.

The turnout was solid. In a place that seat a couple thousand when packed, this service had about three hundred worshipers.

The service started up when the kids were called to the court floor to dance as the music started to play. It was really nice. The larger crowd was somewhat staid during the music. About three of us had our hands in the air as we sang, most of the people were swaying almost imperceptibly to the music, which was really good. The songs were from a solo singer on an acoustic guitar.

The service easily transitioned into a children's sermon, which was about obeying God. MC felt uncharacteristically shy, so we stayed up in the stands and watched.

Then there were some announcements...

After that, the sermon finally started up. Discipleship Pastor John Kasay gave the sermon. 

It spoke directly into some themes that are happening in my life and my understanding of the Bible. Candidly, it was exactly what I have been thinking and learning about. 

The title of the sermon was "Is Your Popcorn Ready?" That title tied back to some story about a football game between Ole Miss and Alabama. I didn't understand how the game was relevant to the sermon, nor do I understand how the title linked to the themes that he expounded on during the sermon.

Despite those small points of confusion, the content of the sermon was excellent. It was about some very basic material, but all of it was really important stuff. That the sermon felt pretty foundational (basic) to me may indicate that I may be undergoing some growth in my knowledge, but I will take this kind of basic eight days a week. And the nature of the message likely met the crowd with exactly the kind of message that many of them needed to hear.

Pastor John started with an explanation of the Trinity, using a common picture that I have seen many times. Click on it and take some time with it.

Next, Pastor John elaborated on the way that we have two Advocates, one in Heaven and one within us. The one is Heaven is Yeshua. The one within us is the Holy Spirit. He explained that Yeshua made the promise in John 14:16 that after He departed, He was leaving His followers with the Advocate who would live with and in the Body of Christ until the final consummation of all things at the end.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. (John 14:16-20)

In what I am currently learning about, this is the most important verse in the Bible. It inaugurated humanity's exposure to The Holy Spirit. As the facet of the Godhead that can live within us, the Holy Spirit is extremely important.  I believe that the Spirit can reveal truth to us when we read Scripture, the Spirit can fortify our obedience to God's Word, the Spirit can enable us to speak in miraculous languages (including heavenly languages), and the Spirit can even enable us to operate in the prophetic. The Holy Spirit also provides us the ability to live within our divine gifts and use them.

In short, the Holy Spirit is an essential part of a believer's existence and He is also the most frequently misunderstood and overlooked person in the Godhead. 

The presence of this Spirit is the promise of an entirely new humanity, in fact. Paul used  1 Corinthians 2:14 to illustrate the observation about how we are different than those who don't believe (referred to as "the natural person).

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2:14)

This verse refers to an entirely new understanding of reality that can only be spiritually discerned, and it's an understanding that distinguishes us from the naturally-minded world, one that is an illumination from the Holy Spirit itself.

Pastor John clearly had my attention when we went there. As I glanced around, I may have been a bit more excited than most people in attendance. But this is such an important thing to grasp and live out. Without understanding the role of the Holy Spirit, we are candidly missing out on the depth and texture of what God has given us through His promises.

The Holy Spirit is essential!

Then Pastor John went to Acts 2, in which the Holy Spirit came into the world and gifted the apostles in miraculous ways. Here is that picture of those events that I love so much:

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)

Pastor John then linked these themes to the message that had been imparted to the young ones on the basketball court floor - the important of hearing and obeying God. This theme was tied back to the Holy Spirit in the sense that when you are living with the Holy Spirit within you, you also have a supernatural ability to live within the confines of God's Law. 

Through the Holy Spirit, we can be also be freed of all of our chains - be they addiction, anger, co-dependency, shame, deceit, lust, or anything else that can be redeemed from darkness to light in our lives. And when God lays claim to chains and breaks them, He will also return beauty for ashes. I've seen quite a bit of this lately. 

At the end, Pastor John walked around the basketball court with a baby in his arms. He explained to the crowd that this was the "impossible baby." He and his wife had struggled to have children years ago and three of their four children were therefore adopted. He then explained that the impossible baby was his grandchild. 

When Pastor John and his wife thought they would not be able to have a family, they are now proud grandparents.

Beauty for ashes, every single time!

At the end of the service, two men were invited to speak who work for a ministry that has been running a ministry to people in prison. This organization has been going for sixty years and they spoke compellingly about the importance of helping those who are living in that most difficult of circumstances. MoHC gave them $25K and then their leaders laid hands on the men during prayer.

Then we had a benediction and it was all over. Mariel Charlotte and I emerged out into the beautifully chilly weather that has set upon North Carolina and headed home.

I can definitely say that David Chadwick can definitely create a successful church. This will be one, I have no doubt. 

In fact, it already is. 

We enjoyed our time with MoHC.

Great job, yet again, David Chadwick.