About Defining Moment
Where we've been and where we're going.
Our Beginnings
Long Hollow has had an exciting past. The church was founded in 1977 by a group of people whose heart was to build a church committed to reaching people with the gospel.
God used our founding pastor, W. W. Harrison, to build into Long Hollow during the early years a deep burden for evangelism. We made the decision to build our first building in 1978 containing a first worship center which held about 250 people. It has since been converted into preschool classrooms.
The God-given desire for reaching our community continued under the leadership of Gerry Claybrook, our second pastor, whose heart was to seek creative ways to attract unbelievers. The church continued to grow and responded in faith to a challenge to build again, including a 900-seat worship center built in 1988. This worship center has since been converted into worship and classroom space for our older children.
In the fall of 1996, Long Hollow began a new chapter. With no staff and facing significant financial challenges, about 250 people began to pray and seek the Lord's direction. The Lord began to answer those prayers in significant ways. The most significant was that hundreds of people began coming, and we have been growing ever since. We have seen countless lives touched and changed by Jesus Christ.
Recent Years
In an effort to reach even more people, Long Hollow chose to build the Dome (Phase 1) in 2000 in a campaign called "Building for Lives." The Dome has been one of our best tools in reaching people, especially teenagers with the gospel.
In 2001, Long Hollow took a giant step to build the Kids Center (Phase 2) in order to creatively teach children and their parents. What a great tool this building has been in assisting us in impacting the lives of people.
Faced with ever-bigger crowds and the reality that there were still so many more people to be reached, Long Hollow made the bold decision of building our current worship center (Phase 3). That campaign, held in 2003, was called "I Love This Place." Our worship center has already become yet another effective tool for us to use in winning our world to Christ.
We thank God for placing in us a deep desire to go for it and to see as many people as possible come to know the Lord. And though we have seen God move in incredible ways in our past, we have a sense that this is only the beginning. Our future looks even brighter.
Play it Safe?
Long Hollow has had a great run in the past few years. The temptation for many churches at this point is to begin to play it safe and protect what's been gained. But it only takes a moment to look at what is happening around us to realize that our work is just the beginning. In His sovereignty, God planted Long Hollow right where it is knowing that one day literally thousands of homes would be built all around us. Could it be that He knew Long Hollow would accept the assignment of joining with Him to aggressively reach out to this area? What a great opportunity we have to keep going for it. And what a great responsibility we have to go for it. The sky's the limit if we're willing.
Our Problem
Whatever it takes! This statement is more than a rallying cry. It is the fundamental ministry philosophy of our church. An articulation of what we've always tried to do - to go to any length to reach a lost and dying world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to provide opportunities, activities, and an environment for life change.
Through the years, Long Hollow has done whatever it takes, including everything from adding a Saturday night service to create space on Sunday morning; to moving classrooms into modular space and offices into trailers; to launching a satellite campus to impact people previously beyond our reach; to displacing over 500 students off-site to a nearby high school for connect groups; to setting up auxiliary parking off-site and shuttling folks on buses for the past 2 1/2 years; to introducing repeated building campaigns to add spaces that were too small as we moved into them. Long Hollow has taken many risks and made many adjustments to reach as many people as possible with the gospel.
Today we are faced with yet another challenge. Despite recent building campaigns, we are out of space. We are using virtually every square foot of this campus and most of the community high school and annex every week. Classes are meeting in hallways, storage rooms are being renovated for children's space, grassy areas are being converted to parking lots, a third worship service has been added, and more. If we are to indeed reach thousands more with the gospel, and make a serious attempt to impact the growing communities around us, and continue to do whatever it takes, we need a God-sized solution to this enormous problem of limited space.