April 14, 2008
by Emily Enders Odom

PASO ROBLES, CA – When Tom Taylor was invited to preach at the Highlands new church development here on the Sunday after Easter, he never envisioned addressing an overflow crowd.

"Imagine preaching to 700 people on the day the church traditionally calls ‘low Sunday,'" said Taylor, the PC(USA)'s deputy executive director of mission. "It completely wowed me, what God is doing. It's simply astonishing what is going on here in only a year and a half's time."

Indeed since first launching and housing its ministry in a local movie theater in the heart of the city in the spring of 2006, the Highlands Church – a new church development of Santa Barbara Presbytery funded by the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands (MIJHH)- has moved from one service of worship with an average attendance of 180 to three services with an average attendance of 550.

The church's children's ministry is also experiencing extraordinary growth, with an average of 150 children under the age of 12 each Sunday.

MIJHH is the five-year campaign of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to raise $40 million for new international mission personnel and for church development in the U.S., particularly racial ethnic and immigrant congregations.

Located in one of the fastest growing areas in California, the Highlands Church has already begun to establish a Reformed, multicultural and multi-generational presence where none has existed before. To accomplish this, the Rev. Graham Baird, the church's organizing pastor, and his ministry colleagues have been intentional about taking Christ into the community.

"The Highlands Church is without a doubt one of the very utmost missionally driven congregations I think I know of heretofore," Taylor said. "Graham and the members of his team are incredibly bold in the community, putting Christ quite literally at its very center by holding worship there, doing a Bible study at a local pizza place, and using many other community venues for outreach. Their thinking is so outside of the box, which is what is really drawing people to this ministry."

In fact, at the conclusion of the church's "Got Joy" sermon series, for which Taylor was the guest preacher on March 30, the congregation's 100th Sunday, Highlands broke another regular Sunday attendance record on April 6 with 727 in worship.

"The worship here is jaw-dropping," said Taylor. "It's like riding a wave. I would put the church's worship leader and praise band up in front of our any of our largest congregations. They were that powerful."

The congregation, which has recently had to make accommodations for overflow attendance in one of the movie theater's lounges, will continue to worship there until construction of its new, multi-purpose facility is completed later this year.

"There's no such thing as ‘low Sunday' here," Taylor said. "The Sunday after Easter when I preached, Highlands chose to kick off its new small groups program. On top of that, more than 20 students participated in a new high school ministry and over 60 people were involved in a ministry for seniors."

What really struck Taylor was the vast age differences he found in the young church. "There were as many older adults as younger people," he said. "It was a complete and utter mixture across the spectrum."

Taylor believes that the Highlands Church can serve as a model for other PC(USA) congregations. "Many of the things that they are doing here could easily translate into other contexts – multicultural, geographic – to help our churches grow," he said.

"In a year when the General Assembly Council has just voted to recommend to the General Assembly a church wide commitment to ‘Grow God's Church Deep and Wide' – to grow in numbers, in discipleship and in diversity – the Highlands Church is a congregation to watch."

Presbyterian News Service