Pastor's Circle - Chip Henderson

Chip Henderson is pastor of Pinelake Baptist Church. Pinelake is a four-campus church that is experiencing great growth. He answered questions about evangelism and why Pinelake launch satellite campuses.


Is the great Commission relevant to today?

Oh, absolutely Matt.

Those were the marching orders to the church.

Jesus was, of course, saying those words to the disciples.

But they apply to all of us.

What do you find as one of the premiere ways to invite people into a relationship w/Christ?

It's really life on life.

In the early expansion of the church...when you have mass conversions.

But as you watch the church expand...you begin to see it becomes almost one on one.

For us, what we're finding in Mississippi at Pine Lake is life on life...that is the way that Christianity is best, I guess, spread or shared.

What are the characteristics of an effective evangelist?

Not everybody has the gift of evangelism. Some people are naturally gifted at evangelism.

I would say, Matt, that every Christ follower has the responsibility to share how Christ has changed them.

You go to work or school or the tennis club, and you just share the relationship you have and the hope that you have.

In a day when people want to argue with religion, people cannot argue with what God is doing in your life.

Compassionate ministry seems to go along with evangelism. Do you find that to be the case today?

Oh absolutely.

You can't say we're going to be either, or.

Jesus called us to be both. What we're finding at Pinelake is that it's in the context of compassion ministry...we do what we do, because of the love of Christ that we have.

It's in meeting those needs that gives us a platform to speak into lives.

That's the best news that we can share. For us, Matt, it's not one or the other, it's both, and.

Why did you decide to become a multi-campus church?

Well, initially we had space issues.

Several months later, we began to look at our small group ministry...how many houses do we need to plan for in a neighboring county.

We found out we had a thousand people there.

So that began the expansion of multi-site for us.

It was a response...we found that God was at work.

We're just trying to help them be the church in their community.

Does it feel funny to show preaching on a screen?

Oh yeah. It's weird to say the least.

If you come to our main campus, most people watch the side screens anyway.

That has been, in our experience, the teaching on video has been the smallest obstacle to overcome.