The Church of the Living God is on the move. People are being baptized, souls are being saved. But you wonder, another church in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Bible Belt.
Well, Who better to talk about that than my friend? Radio host, man of God, Peter. Pastor Andrew Hopper. Pastor Hopper, what's going on in Greensboro, brother? Man, we're seeing an incredible movement.
The Lord is, I mean, he really is on the move. And part of that is not just in church growth. It's also in churches multiplying and becoming other churches and planting new churches. And so the short answer is, man, we've had a chance to plant a new church right alongside, not very far from one of our campuses. We're a multi-site church, but instead of a campus, we've been able to plant a brand new church with a guy that was in our church for the last decade or so and raised up here.
And, man, they've just planted Greenhouse Church and they're getting ready to launch and they're blowing and going. And this is Pastor Nico.
Now, what do you say about this guy before we bring him on, before we put on the hot seat, before the ratings go through the roof? What do you say about him, Pastor Nico? Nico is an incredibly positive, energetic person that the Lord has had his hand on for a long time. And he's an incredible communicator and he loves people. Awesome.
Pastor Nico, what's it like to be a part of this church growth, man, to see souls being saved? People in Greensboro, kind of near the Northground ANT campus. That's right. It's been really cool to number one be a part of Mercy Hill. Like, like you said, I've been a part of Mercy Hill for 10 years and came as a freshman.
It was so funny because a part of my story was I walked into Mercy Hill and was like, I don't want to go here. But I made a deal with two of my friends. We had decided we were both, we're all Christians, the three of us. We said we were going to go to church together. And like the last two weeks, we had gone to other churches, and I liked one and they didn't like it.
And the next week, they didn't like it. And I was just like, listen, I'm ready to be somewhere.
Okay.
So even if y'all like the church and I don't like it, let's just make it. Let's just go ahead and do it.
So we walk into Mercy Hill.
Now, this is different than anything I've ever experienced as a church. I grew up in a black Baptist church. And so we come into Mercy Hill and they finish in an hour and a half. And I'm like, where's the rest of the service? I was like, you know what?
I can rock with this.
So I plug in, I plug into the college ministry. And um just a part of my story is um uh I I I ended up Having a fallen out with the theater professor, because I went to school to study theater, and I had fallen out. I have made some dumb decision. I'm not going to pursue theater after I graduate.
So I go to our college pastor, I say, hey man, I don't think I'm going to do this after I graduate. What do you think I could do with a theater degree? He looks at me and he says, I see in you the makings of a church planter.
Now, I had no idea what that was.
So I said, okay. And I walked away, not thinking anything of it, you know. Later that summer, I did a summer project with our church. And we did this pro uh this this One of the guys who did a talk, he actually, his name is Cody Whitman, he actually helped plant Mercy Hill Church. He does this talk.
He says, I want you to write down everything you feel like you're gifted at. I want you to write down everything you feel like you're passionate about, the things you would do if nobody paid you. Then I want you to write down all the places where God's people need to break in. He says, Where those three things intersect, that's probably where God has uniquely called you and wired you. Wow.
I'm looking at this piece of paper. I lean over the guy who's sitting next to me. I'm like, I have no idea what this is. And I put it in my car, and I'm just like not thinking about it. Maybe a week later, I'm cleaning out my car at one of those car wash places with the vacuum, and I see the piece of paper, and I just felt like the hand of God had put his hand on my shoulder.
And he said, Son, I'm calling you to plan a church. My eyes open wide. I'm like, I couldn't wait to go see our college pastor because I'm like, All right, I'm trying to plan a church. When are we doing this? We're doing this next year.
He's like, no, give it a little while. I said, how long? He said, about five years.
So I joined our college staff. I did college ministry for about three years. Then I moved into our community groups ministry for about six months. And then they called me up to be a campus pastor for three years. And so, man, those six years really just shaped me and molded me and prepared me for the kind of ministry that we're doing now.
Yeah, and I want to ask you the obvious question: the kind of elephant in the room: how's it going?
Okay, but I want to come back to that. I want to just remove another elephant out of the room. Pastor Andrew Hopper, you've got, I showed up at your other campus one day, and there's hundreds of pastors in there from all kinds of other churches. And some folks might see what you're doing as, what is he doing sharing this with other pastors? What's he doing with this great breaking growth barriers, you know, breaking barriers, these kinds of meetings?
I mean, aren't they like the competition? You know, aren't they all going after the dollar and turf wars and all? And what's he doing? And set up another church. I mean, Pastor Nico's church could be more successful than yours.
Talk about kind of the thinking, you know, below the service, like the groundwork for your whole ministry, you know, because people hear you on the radio and they're hearing about this new church plant. Kind of, where is this coming from and kind of what's the mission with it? And then we'll jump back to Pastor Nico.
Well, our greatest measure of success would be that Pastor Nico's church is more successful than ours. You know, I mean, if they can run farther than we can, I mean, that would just be our, I mean, that would be our ultimate thing, you know, joy. But yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, we just view our mission as two-pronged. One is, you know, I think about it like this: man, we're planting a church, Mercy Hill, for a community and a generation or two, you know, but every church rises and dies. You know, that's just every church that's been here since Jesus walked the earth.
But then there's another element to what we do that is not for the next 30 years, it's for the next 300, maybe the next 3,000 if Jesus doesn't come back. That legacy is tied completely up. Up in the transfer, the decentralization. It's in sending guys like Nico out to plant their own church that will then plant another church. And that's the DNA that Nico has.
He's going to be as concerned with church planting as he is growth. We want both, you know, and so we view this as we view this as the ultimate long game as continuing to transfer what God is doing into others who will then teach others, also, as Paul said. Pastor Nico, one of the sadder descriptions of the Western Church, which we've become very cowardly. Palace. We've become very comfortable, you know, kind of rich, a little bit like some of those laya to see in other churches in Revelation, early part.
You know, you talked through that. What doesn't sound like that's the direction of your church? It sounds like you're winning souls to the Lord and discipling and building up and baptizing and mobilizing. And I mean, here you have your senior pastor saying, Hey, we want his church to be bigger than ours, man. What's up with that?
Dude, it's crazy. To answer your question, how things are going. We haven't quite seen somebody get saved yet to go from death to life, but we have seen our first baptism. We had our first baptism earlier. I think it was in July.
I think it was the last Sunday in June, matter of fact. One of our team members, their child, had made the decision to accept Jesus while they were still part of Mercy Hill. And, you know, they wanted to wait and see before they got baptized. And, man, I just tell this story. It's crazy because the mother was talking to me.
She had told her son, like, hey, do you want to get baptized at Mercy Hill? Because you have an option. And I would have been like, fine. I'm like, God gives the Lord, you know. But she said, hey, do you want to get baptized at Greenhouse Church?
Are you going to get baptized at Mercy Hill? And the kid goes, I'm going to get baptized at Greenhouse because that's our family. You know what I mean? Like, we have been meeting as a launch team, still part of Mercy Hill, but he had experienced the community. And so we've launched services.
We do what I call preview services just up until the point where we like officially launch on September 14th. And God's just been really showing us some awesome things, man. The people are coming. Like, since we were commissioned in April, we had about five people join our team just from seeing what's going on. They start coming.
They're like, man, I want to be a part of this. And they join our team.
So God is really doing some awesome things.
So for listeners, two questions as we get out of here. And then I'll come back to you for the close. Pastor Andrew, for listeners in Utah or Iowa or Missouri, wherever listening that may never be able to come to your church, Pastor Nico, I want you to tell how they can pray for you.
Okay.
And then after that, I want you to give a shameless plug. And invite people in the 336 or maybe the 919 on the edge there to come check you out and plug in and get plugged in. Man, the first way y'all can pray for us is, man, we are begging God for that first salvation. Like, we've seen some people make some rededications, you know, but like this Sunday in particular, I don't know when this is going to air, but August 3rd is going to be a big like we've challenged our team, given them some invited cards, invite somebody who's close to you, far from God. And man, I just prepared a message that like really just lays it out, you know, and I'm going to give an opportunity for somebody to get up out of their chair and talk to somebody about placing their faith in Jesus.
So that's a big deal, man. We're asking God to really bless that, you know.
So you can pray for salvations. Like we got a goal for this year. We want to see 16 people come to know Jesus and 16 people join our team after we launch.
Okay.
Now, somebody probably is asking the question, how can you ask God for that? Like probably saying, I hear Pastor Andrew talk about this all the time when he talks about setting a goal for baptism. We can't control whether or not somebody can get saved, but we can ask God to do it. We can set up the environment for somebody to accept Jesus. We can call them to believe in Jesus.
So that's what we're going to do. And then when people walk in our door, we're going to follow up with them. We're going to make sure if they want to join and they got it, you know, they got the capacity to join our team. We want them to join our team.
So those are the two things that we can pray. You can pray for. Oh, the one thing that you mentioned and that I didn't get a chance to chat about was why plant a church in the same area. Man, the one quote I heard just stuck with me: you got to plant. There's every, you need every kind of church to reach every kind of person.
You know, Pastor Andrew talked about we're trying to reach a community and a generation. Like, God has given me a different burden, you know? And so, like, that means our churches are going to look different. We're going to be aligned in the main things, but like, our church is going to look different. The way we go about some things are going to be different.
And the people who walk in to Mercy Hill, they might go, this is not my church. You know, this is not for me. And they might walk into Greenhouse Church and say, Oh, I got a home here, and vice versa. Like, we want to be the, I want to be locked up with pastors in the area that are like, hey, they come and I say, what are you looking for in the church? And they said, man, we're looking for adoption and foster care church planning.
I'm going to say, you need to go to Mercy Hill. You know, somebody comes to Mercy Hill and says, man, we're looking for heavy evangelism and discipleship. Pastor Andrew, I want him to say, you need to go to Greenhouse Church because that's what they're about. You know what I mean? So, Shameless Plug, we're launching on September 14th, 5 p.m.
You can find out information about that by going to greenhousechurchnc.com. GreenhouseChurchNC.com.
Okay, and I'm sure you're on the IG and Facebook and all that too.
So I'll make sure I HM you on the IG, on all that good stuff, right? Acronyms. On the DM. Yeah. Awesome.
That's right. Honestly. I can't think of a better name for a church than Greenhouse. I just love that. I mean, Pastor, in effect, The greenhouse does a lot to cultivate, to grow, to nurture.
To create a lot of fruit. Talk about the importance of that and the importance of the big C church, which you're encouraging a lot of pastors to think bigger than just their tribe and their area code and their parking lot.
Well, the big C church is expressed only in local churches. I mean, that's how it is expressed. And so I think we fulfill the great commission by planting churches from here to the ends of the earth. And yeah, I couldn't agree more about Greenhouse. That's Nico's heart.
Nico wants to see people come to faith and be raised all the way up. And, you know, that's what a greenhouse is for.
So I think they're going to do it. And I think God's going to put his hand on what they're doing. Thank you, Lord. Hey, real quick, it seems like the last week I have bumped into like three or four people who are believers. We had a connection.
but they're just not in a church. And I kind of almost was caught off guard. What do you say to so many listening? Who are, they're just not plugged in. And some of them are saying, hey, I like watching into my jammers and watching the screen.
Maybe they just, since COVID, they never got back out. Or others are just kind of like, well, I got my thing going and I don't want some other guy to tell me what to do. What do you say to people challenging? On a positive note, this is growing, this is changing our world together. Yeah, I think when people, you know, want to watch or listen and they want to define church, there's popular music, hey, the church is by a fire and outside and the country boy kind of thing.
And I would just say, hey, you don't get to define what a church is because it's God's institution.
So he defines what it is. And so, you know, for us that are not connected in churches, there are real questions. Who are you one-anothering with? Who's watching your back? Whose back are you watching?
What elders are you accountable to? These are things that God has given us so that his institution of the church will flourish. It's for our good and his glory. We don't get to define it. Can I just read it real quick?
Please do. We were talking earlier about basketball. We got to get out of here. We're just talking about basketball. Like, you could say you're a basketball player, but if you're not on a team, it's like, are you really?
You know, you could be playing, but are you really a basketball player? I think it's one of the things the mark is like, man, we're playing on a team. I got on the jersey. I got, you know, I got teammates I'm passing the ball to, and they're not going to let me stay down. You know what I mean?
Like, so anyway, Team Jesus, winning team, the church, I mean, this is an exciting thing. This isn't a shame. Hey, get somewhere Sunday morning. This is, hey, I can't wait to get over there. I can't wait to get in that greenhouse.
I can't wait to fuel my soul from what happens and feed off the others and sharpen other people and build disciples and be discipled. We're getting out of here. Website for your ministry, breaking barriers, breaking growth barriers. Mercy helps folks can hear your message. A lot of them hear you on the radio nationwide.
You speak at a lot of camps and events, but what's the best way to connect with you, Pastor Andrew Hopper? Yeah, to connect with me. Me and all that stuff, you can just go to andrewphopper.com. Our church is mercyhillchurch.com, and that'll get you everywhere you need to go. To the top.
Why do you
