Witness (May 2026)

            On May 4, 2026, our associate minister, Kim Koonts, and I attended an informal gathering of leaders and pastors from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina. Our sole purpose was to discuss how Cooperative Baptists practice evangelism. We want to make the practice of sharing our faith a bigger emphasis in the CBF. At Hillside church, we want evangelistic efforts to define us as a people.

After the resurrection, Jesus met with his disciples. He told them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). What did they witness? They stood with Jesus after that had seen him die with their own eyes. They were witnesses of the resurrection.

            What have we witnessed? Having received forgiveness and having been filled with the Holy Spirit, we have seen that the testimony handed down to us by those original disciples is true. Jesus is the Savior. He indeed did die for our sins. He was raised from the dead. All who turn to him in faith, confess their sins, receive forgiveness, and entrust their lives to him will be saved. That’s our testimony. Like the original followers of Jesus, we are disciples and we are witnesses God has sent to testify.

            What’s the point of bearing witness? After being raised from the dead, the resurrected Jesus met with his disciples and told them, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). We tell our faith stories as a step in our work of sharing Christ with the world. We want to help go from being lost, cut off from God in sin, to being saved. We want to help our neighbors the people we meet become disciples of Jesus.

            How do you and I, the people of the Hillside Church congregation, answer this call from our Lord? How do we practice evangelism and disciple-making in a way that’s faithful to the words of Jesus and true to our church’s culture and personality? We’re going to spend much of the rest of 2026, attending to these questions.

            We’ve already become members of the National Association of Evangelicals. I encourage you to read up on their organization (https://www.nae.org/). This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with sharing Jesus with the world. I also ask that you pray. Ask God to help the Hillside elders lead our church to be more energetic in our efforts to share Jesus with lost, unchurched people. Ask God to show how to best take up this work. Ask God to help you personally grow in your own walk with Christ.

            Ultimately, I believe that the closer we get to God in our relationship with God in Christ, the more natural it will be to tell others about him. I have no trouble talking to people about my wife or my kids. They’re always on my mind. It can be this way with Jesus. We grow closer and closer to him, and he becomes the center of our thought. Our identity in him is such that our lives wouldn’t make sense apart from who we are in Christ.

            How do we impart this understanding to the people of Hillside? How do we guide the people of Hillside to live lives centered on Jesus? Working to know Christ and share Christ is what Hillside will strive to do as a church. I encourage you to seek to understand your role in this.