Pastors Mark and Nicole Hammond and their team at Celebration Center, hosted the first HGM Leaders One-Day Event on Saturday, February 4. The day started with worship, followed by Pastor Mark sharing some of the Celebration Center story. Bill Rose, HGM Healthy Growing Coordinator, then introduced “Small Churches Can Make a Big Difference” (https://iphc.org/evangelism/hgm/), a new resource produced by HGM. A breakout for senior pastors was led by Bill Rose, and the Celebration Center staff led breakouts for children’s ministry, worship, connections, and students – sharing their systems and best practices.
In the last session, Trey Jones, HGM Director, encouraged everyone to fix their thoughts on who is true, honorable, and lovely and recognize that Jesus is still active in their cities and is still leading them forward into His purpose for them, their churches, and their cities. The session ended with worship and prayer over the pastors.
The day finished with everyone building relationships around the table during lunch. Fifteen different churches made up the 175 in attendance. The HGM Leader’s 1-Day served as a launch pad for ongoing peer coaching in northern California and as an on-ramp for pastors who have been isolated and doing ministry alone. HGM will host three more Leader’s 1-Day events in 2023 – Belpre, Ohio, Richmond, Virginia, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
