Microcosm

We have so many wonderful things to share from Easter weekend. Not only was the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead a beautiful time, but many lives were transformed.

But I have to tell you about last Saturday night at our Portage Park campus. It was their first Saturday night service, and I went to celebrate with them.

We were blown away by the crowd as people poured in through the auditorium doors.

Looking around in amazement, an image came to my mind from 17 years ago: Paul Hardt shared his burden for his childhood church, Northside Gospel Center, in a congregation meeting shortly after I arrived. With genuine sadness, he talked about how their attendance had dwindled to fewer than 40 people. I was moved with a burden for that church.

At the time, Junior was going to Moody. One Friday, I picked him up from college and, on the way home, took him to Northside Gospel Center. We drove around and prayed, asking God for wisdom and to enable us to help them.

I visited a service there about 5 years later, and my heart broke for the tiny attendance (about 20 people) and the state of the building, as they had pails set out to collect rainwater. Periodically, I’d drive by and pray. I wanted us to get a shot at turning it around.

Fast forward to 2019…Northside Gospel Center merged with The Bridge and became a Bridge campus. We faced a lot of challenges early on, with COVID shutting us down just a couple of months after we opened. But people were coming to Christ, getting baptized, and bringing their friends, family, and neighbors.

Then Paul Hardt, who grew up going to church in that same building, became Campus Pastor in 2021. What has happened since, under his leadership and care, is nothing short of amazing.

Before merging, Northside Gospel Center averaged about 30 people on Sundays. In 2025, the week before Easter, we had 550 people!

And get this…in their first Saturday night service last week, we had 210 people! That was just on Saturday night…another 700 showed up the next day on Easter!

No more pails for rainwater.

But we saw a dozen or more raise their hands professing Jesus in that Saturday evening service alone, with many more on Sunday!

I think it's a beautiful microcosm of what we as a church are seeing across all of our campuses and all of our service times. We are a people who take Jesus’ Great Commission seriously. And many are being reached with the Gospel because of it.

What a joy it is for me to be your pastor!