“I was baptized for the first time 30 years ago, but I wasn’t the one who made that choice. It has been on my heart for a while to make the choice for myself to become baptized… today, I participated in the outward symbol of the change God has made in me, and publicly professed my belief in Jesus Christ.”

We are sad but excited to share that our Chets family will be sending the Sullivan family to serve in New England. Darren, our Pastor of Multiplication and Missions, will begin serving as a Church Planting Catalyst with the North American Mission Board and the Baptist Convention of New England on August 1.

Sometimes life is interrupted by the unexpected. One never knows what tomorrow will bring. In March 2015 I went to the doctor for a mid-year physical exam. I got the results of my biopsy and found I had stage three prostate cancer. I was worried about taking care of my family, the pain, feeling sick or being different because of treatment, keeping my job, paying my bills, even dying.

203 of our Chets Students and their leaders participated in a Fuge summer camp at Ridgecrest, North Carolina. Students spent time worshiping, studying scripture, building relationships, having fun, and discovering how to live out the mission of sharing Jesus with the world. They heard God speaking to them this week and shared their stories…

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength… Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 At Chets we take the call to love God and love others seriously but sometimes that love is shown in unexpected ways.

Last summer, a family invited their unchurched neighbors to attend VBS at the Nocatee Campus. Those neighbors had a son who invited his friend, Leah Noren, to come with him. After 5-year-old Leah heard how much fun it was, she really wanted to check it out.

Many of us can relate to going through different seasons of faith. There are times you may feel incredibly close to God and other times where you just feel spiritually drained. That’s how Allie Buchanan described her faith journey.

Sometimes loving your neighbor means just as much to you as it does to them. At least that’s been Deirdre Dwyer’s experience.

“I expected to get something out of it spiritually. I don’t think I expected to get something out of it emotionally,” said Patrick Rascoe of his first mission trip. But after spending a week in Mzamomhle, South Africa, Pat said the relationships he built led to emotional attachments that he won’t soon forget.

More than 200 women gathered across our four campuses last weekend for a time of refreshing, refocusing, and renewing at IF:Gathering 2018. This year’s theme was Fanning the Flame based on 2 Timothy 1:6-7.

Four and a half years ago as we were walking out of LifeGroup, Chris and Theresa Imbach excitingly talked to my husband, Art, and I about the Roatan mission trip. They looked at us and said, "You guys should come!" For several years at our other church, we had talked about going on mission, but it never happened. Now that we were settling into Chets, it seemed right and we replied "Okay." I wish I could say that there was intense prayer and spiritual reflection, but it was a simple moment of an invitation extended and accepted.

During the month of April, our adult LifeGroups have been talking about the Bible. That may sound a little strange as we talk about the Bible every week in LifeGroup. But we mean the Bible as a whole book. We’ve been discussing questions like “Can I trust the Bible?” and “Why does the Bible matter?”. As we end this series, we wanted to pass on some of the amazing resources that are out there now to help you spend time in God’s word.

“We talk about living life on mission so we were trying to find something we could do,” said Debbi Hoeft. She and her husband Steve lead a LifeGroup at our Nocatee Campus. Many of their members regularly serve in ministries at the church but they wanted to find an opportunity for their whole group to regularly serve together. They wanted something that would be on-going because they knew that building relationships would take more than just a one-time event.

When we started as a church in April 1998, we committed to being a church that plants churches. Milestone Church in Natick, Massachusetts is one of the nine church plants we support in the the U.S. and Canada.

If our citizenship is in Heaven, are we immigrants here on Earth? Where is our residency? As missionaries, we must obey the regulations concerning visas and residency for Nicaragua. Fortunately, Greg and I attained one year cedula (residency) last year, but as believers, we are citizens of a heavenly kingdom. and we await our residence there.

We had an incredible time celebrating our Savior together last week!

“When I arrived, I didn’t feel that close to God but now [that] we left, I feel closer than I was before.” This is one of many testimonies from students who attended our Chets Students annual THRIVE Weekend 2018. Middle and high school students from all of our campuses met at St. Simons Island, Georgia for a weekend of discipleship, worship, and fellowship. They learned about what it means to be FEARLESS.

There are 2.6 million people who live in Las Vegas and approximately 92 percent of them don’t know Jesus. Heiden Ratner and his wife Neena, both Las Vegas natives, were a part of that statistic.

Pastor Spike interviewed Raphael Leroux this past Sunday at the Hodges Campus. Raphael is one of the pastors at la Chapelle, our new church planting partner in Montreal. You can watch the 12 minute interview below. Raphael shared about some of the challenges of leading a church in Montreal and about a unique opportunity that they have been given to share the love of Christ this Easter.

Living beyond these walls can happen right here in our own community. Whitney Touchton shares about her experience serving with Kidz Xtreme, one of our community missions partners.