New Family Attending!
Our attendance is similar to last quarter, but we have a new family who have two boys with autism.  They are driving all the way from Sumner, GA every Sunday! They have been in search of a church offering special needs ministry for years, and we're thankful to be there for them in this season.

Take A Respite
We're excited to gear up for our Respite Event on October 26th. Our parents are ready for a break!  It's also fantastic to know that we will have a parent ministry room again this year. Parents will be treated to snacks and pampering such as facials and foot spas.  It was such a blessing last year,  and we know it will be again.

Small Groups
The Breathe Moms Small Group has started back, and we're already hearing the stories of the moms who are so thankful for community.  Their stories have been so powerful, and we can see that God is certainly moving among this group of moms.

Promotions
This quarter we've been creating graphics and videos to help promote annual events such as Child Dedication, Family Weekend, Man Up, Baptism Sunday,  the Membership Social, and Breathe Fall Respite.  As always, we hope to provide promotional materials that will help get the word out about these events either on a Sunday morning or through our website and social media feeds.

Legends
We filmed and edited the latest stories in our Legends Series.  The Faircloths and Bonnie Edwards shared the story of God working through their lives in order to bring glory to Him.

Stories Of God's Faithfulness
For quite some time we've been proactively looking for stories to tell  of lives who have been impacted by the Lord and are examples of people being Saved, Healed, Restored, and Fulfilled.  The Cardwell family's story was filmed, and should be used sometime in the new year.  Their story covers pretty much all of the ministries at Heritage Church.

Signage And Updates
We also helped to create and update our Building Signage as well as to lead the atrium redesign mock up, which allowed us to move forward with signage and paint.

In the meantime, we've been working on various projects including a redesign of all re-occurring slides, an updated digitizatization of documents on the resources page, the Tracking project (which aims to help ensure our people are growing at Heritage), and we've researched and selected a Pastoral Care tool for tracking needs and responses at Heritage.  The tool is called Notebird, and it should help us to ensure our people are cared for.

Church Online
We had a regular viewer who had been tuning in to Church Online for two years come and introduce herself to us in person at the Church Online table.  She was ecstatic to get to meet the team, and said we were the reason why she was able to stay connected to a church family.  She came to church as soon as she could in order to be connected in person, which has been a challenge for her as she now is a caretaker for members of her family.

The Storehouse
The Storehouse had a strong 3rd quarter with $63,666 in sales. This is up $1,300 from 3rd quarter last year. Our YTD sales through September are $179,603 which is $12,391 over 2023 Jan-Sept. sales of $167,212.

The Storehouse Team is continuing to grow, adding five new members this quarter- Ken and Bonnie DeMott and Michelle Horne from Heritage, and James Weathers from Hopewell and Carol Larsen from Thomasville. These additions to our team have all been amazing!

The Storehouse Relief team was able to encourage and assist 37 more individuals or households this quarter, providing lots of clothing for back to school needs, beds and mattresses and sleeping bags, furniture and a stove. The Storehouse was also in place to help with various needs that arose as a result of Hurricane Helene at the end of September. As usual, the back to school bag sale was huge with people traveling several hours to purchase school clothing for their kids.

The Storehouse Bible Study Group continues to meet every Thursday. They completed Revelation with Pat Wilson leading in a special time of Communion and will begin Daniel in October. This has been a great time of community and digging into the Word together for 20 plus members of the Storehouse team. Mr. Jack Wilson has played a key role in the sharing from his more than 50 years of studying the Bible and Biblical prophecy.

Local, National , and Global Missions
Locally this quarter, we partnered with Laveta’s Sunday AM teams and Student Ministry in providing a breakfast for Packer football team and coaches. We were also able to partner with Next Gen in their Fam Jam serve day as they served all over the community.  We are meeting with Next Gen pastors and leaders to further develop a plan for ongoing Next Gen awareness, growth, and involvement in missions. An ongoing goal is to partner with the different departments in our church to facilitate and resource missions involvement.

Cancer Treatment Ministry
As an extension of The Covering Ministry, Eddie Seagle was able to take a September trip to pray for and distribute blankets to 36 people of all ages undergoing treatment at the UF Proton Therapy Center in Jacksonville! He was able to pray with Chase Giddens from Moultrie and his family who are there as Chase is undergoing treatment.

Thousands Of Soldiers Worship Jesus
We’ve added Ben Nieman as our newest HGM. He travels to Albany every Sunday morning to lead worship services for soldiers going through Basic Training at Ft. Benning. Every 6-8 weeks,  a new group of several thousand soldiers comes in for basic training and are required to give up access to phones, tablets, and all digital devices. Ben sends us a weekly report and shares regularly that 75-100 soldiers commit to trust Jesus and desire discipleship. CRU ministry is onsite to connect these new believers with growth opportunities. Ben’s ministry in Ft Benning is an incredible opportunity for our church to be a part of impacting soldiers at a critical time in their lives as we partner with Ben financially and in prayer. We will continue to be open to how we can further support and facilitate this fruitful ministry.

Difficulty In the ME
Our global workers who’ve been in the ME for the last six years have dealt with much transition and trauma this quarter as K was informed she was blacklisted and given a week to leave the country. They are currently exploring other options to serve in the ME, but will be home for a few months recovering, receiving some trauma counseling, and seeking the Lord for next steps. We hope to have lots of opportunities in this season to encourage D and K and their 3 precious little ones as in a few days they lost their home, vehicle, school, friendships- all that was familiar- as well as the business they had worked so hard to establish. We cherish and honor their hearts of submission and the price they’ve been willing to pay that the Lord’s Name be worshipped in these hardest to reach places.

This is the time of year when we begin reaching to all of our local, national, and global partners for an updated case for support so that we can formulate an impact report and a 2025 budget proposal. This is always an extremely encouraging time to hear of and celebrate all we’ve gotten to be a part of locally, nationally, and globally.

Heritage Pre-K
One of our goals this quarter has been to have more families serve together. We're thankful to see growth in our volunteers has increased. Recently the playground has been moved closer to Pre-K Ministry and fenced in for our little ones.  We hope to soon see room expansions, as well as moms' space upgrades.

Heritage Kids
During the month of July, Heritage Kids raised $5,318.41 (including a $1,000 match from First National Bank) for Change for a Change to support one of our homegrown missionaries. It is such an important value for our church to impart a heart for giving, serving and missions in our children!

In September, Heritage Kids started our fourth year of Elementary Skills Team (Bible drill) for kids whose parents serve one/worship one.  Bible Skills Team gives kids the opportunity to go deeper with Bible learning and Bible memory during second service.

Students
Our annual Beach Retreat is a great way for our students to launch into the school year and we had 61 students and 17 leaders join for a weekend of fun, worship, teaching, and relationship building! During August and September we averaged 121 students at our middle school (61) and high school (60) weekly worship/small group gatherings.

Student ministry is continuing to do outreach ministry through FCA weekly in the CA Gray courtyard with our students leading devotions and worship. It’s very encouraging for us to see 16 students in one on one discipleship. It is also encouraging to see so many parents involved as small group leaders and other volunteer roles. Chris Brown now oversees Student Services for MS Encounter which focuses on hospitality for families, outreach to new students, and connection with students when they miss. This has made a tremendous difference for middle school students!

Family Ministry
We launched into August with several fun and meaningful opportunities for families. We had a special Sunday morning service with an opportunity for every family to be prayed for and blessed as they launched back into school. We also had close to 100 people join us for community and fun at Recoil trampoline park in Valdosta as we jumped into the school year.

We launched into our 8th season of Fam Jam with lots of fun and a teaching on letting our light shine. “LET’S GLOW!! The next morning, we ate breakfast together at the church, had a devotional time, and were sent out to serve our community. We visited nursing homes, worked on a fountain at CA Gray, and did several home visits. It was an opportunity to make meaningful impact in our community while teaching our kids the joy of serving others. As always, we had a very meaningful Child Dedication and helped those young dads connect with an older father in our church for wisdom! We also have a monthly gathering for dads of young kids.

Updates And Improvements
Our new elementary playground equipment has been installed! We also installed a metal shelter for shade for our families. This will be a big blessing on Sunday mornings, during Sunday and Wednesday night kids programming, and for our home school community on Tuesday mornings.

We have our next student ministry/family trip to Honduras planned for Spring Break 2025 which will be led by Crysti and Clint Handfield.

New Prayer Opportunities And Leaders
In prayer ministry, we continue to explore ways to get more of our people engaged in corporate prayer as well as offering opportunities for people to grow in their individual prayer lives. This quarter we added a Tuesday evening worship and prayer gathering that has been a refreshing and strengthening time for those present. Four different teams- Kerri White and Connor Bloodworth; Cathy Owen and Zach Owen; Stewart and Shannon DeMott; and Emily Hall and Jim Lewis- have each taken one week a month to lead. We’ve drawn some new people into these corporate prayer gatherings and hope to see this continue in some way next semester.

Eddie Seagle, one of the participants of this summer’s  Prayer Course,  took the baton and led an excellent Prayer Course group this semester. This course covers some fundamentals of prayer- adoration, intercession, petition, spiritual warfare, etc. We hope this will be an ongoing group each semester to continue to encourage all of our people to grow in prayer.

Our Sunday morning prayer team has added 4 new members this quarter as well as providing the opportunity for some of our students to begin coming in and being mentored in prayer ministry.

Freedom! 
We look forward to the upcoming Freedom Retreat at the end of November as a great way to engage and employ lots of prayer people as intercessors and altar ministers. This Freedom event is wonderful training as we prepare together leading up to the event as well as serving together.  It’s always an encouragement to these people who were shaped to pray!

Altar Ministry & Prayer Teams
The prayer people are celebrating the altars being moved back into the worship center. The hope is that the altars being present will facilitate people coming forward and praying.

John and Mary Kaye Turrentine, our Sunday a.m. prayer team leaders have taken the initiative to get all the prayer teams together on a regular basis. Jason and Laveta have graciously allowed prayer team to join the Sunday Support gathering once a month at 8:00 a.m. in The Hub. We had our first joint gathering in September and look forward to this as a powerful way for these two teams to walk together in unity of purpose!

A Message From Cathy
Our church has been especially blessed with a strong and mature core group of intercessors who play a significant yet often unseen role, which is as they would have it. I would like to share a recent message from Cathy Owen to several of our executive staff team members. Cathy texted:

_{“I felt led to share with you what has been happening in the prayer groups that I am a part of- the Wednesday morning prayer, the Monday night prayer, and the Tuesday night prayer group. In each one there has been spontaneous prayer for each of you, our pastors. People are weeping, travailing, crying out, declaring over each of you specifically and as a team. It has been amazing to experience. No one is leading that way. It is absolutely a move of God in the hearts of people. I have been so moved and thought you may want to know.”}

We believe the role these faithful and seasoned intercessors play is vital and we are so very grateful for them.

For 3rd quarter, we had 144 people involved in ministering to 159 people receiving pastoral care. These numbers represent care administered officially through the pastoral care ministry of our church in the form of counseling, or healing prayer sessions, visits, cards, and providing meals for funerals. Thankfully, most of the pastoral care occurring is extended through small groups and team life groups. Thankfully, many of our small group leaders and team life leaders are caring well for the members of their groups so the needs are covered. When she hears of a need, Dawn checks to see where the person is connected and contacts that leader to ensure the person is being cared for. If the person in need isn’t connected, Dawn arranges for care through our pastoral care ministry.

Notebird
We’ve  found a program, Notebird, that we feel will offer a comprehensive way of keeping track of pastoral care needs and how they’re met. Training our team on this platform, combined with further development of the quarter system, has great potential to move us forward in the administrative side of pastoral care. We’re currently in a holding pattern with this as we are in a season of transition in some areas.

Griefshare
Our Griefshare small group led by Lisa DeMott has been a safe place of sharing and healing for 26 participants this fall. Griefshare will host the annual Surviving the Holidays event on November 13 for anyone who’s experienced loss and needs encouragement heading into the holidays. Also coming up will be our annual Remembrance Sunday on the first Sunday of December. Both of these events will be opportunities to encourage those who’ve experienced loss this year.

Not Just A Fresh Coat Of Paint
We're busy!  We've been working on the Atrium Project which will not only include the new coats of paint, but also improvements to signage and furnishings.  We hope to make the Atrium a fantastic place for our people to congregate, but we're also working to make sure that we help guide them to the appropriate places for questions, kids ministry, and even restrooms or the worship center.  

Repairs...Pardon Our Dust
We are currently making repairs to the Breathe mobile unit as well as attempting to resolve some AC issues on campus.  We are also addressing erosion issues with our roads and entrances.

A Renewed Vision & Strong Launch
Our fall small groups launched on August 18. We were super encouraged going into this launch after experiencing some great time with our leaders in our small group leader training sessions. The sharing and testimonies among our small group leaders reminded us all of the importance of small groups for community and life transformation.

We had a strong small group launch which went very smoothly. Much of this is attributed to excellent and diligent work by Courtney Norman, our small group admin. We launched 58 groups and we have a record number of 945 people consistently participating in groups this semester. It’s been very encouraging to drive across our campus most evenings and see so many cars parked outside most of our buildings as small groups are in progress. Our hopes and prayers for our people to become reengaged in groups are being realized!

The Return Of Freedom Groups
One of our goals was to reignite the flame for our Freedom groups. We have three strong Freedom groups meeting this semester. We’re currently gathering team leaders and speakers as we’re planning a Freedom Retreat for November 22nd and 23rd. Since we haven’t had a retreat in a while, we’re in the process of reaching to any past Freedom participants who haven’t yet attended a retreat.

Getting To The Basics
Another goal was to offer some groups  establishing new believers in the basics of our faith. Georgia Barber has a great group on Growing in Christ and Rod and Lasonda Davis are offering a foundational group entitled Life With Jesus. We hope to continue to offer these type groups as they both  would be great next steps for those completing Discover Heritage.

Mid-Sized Groups
We have several mid-sized groups providing a place of community and deeper spiritual growth for a large number of people. Our largest group is the 4th Quarter Bible Study with 70 participants and an average attendance of 38. The Storehouse Family has 87 people consistently engaged serving and being cared for in community. Chrissie Forehand’s ladies group studying the book of James has 55 participants. Another strong mid-sized group is our 2nd quarter group with about 50 participants. This group is intentionally caring for one another as they eat together, talk about life and faith and dig in to The Sermon on the Mount.

Bible Study & Engagement
There seems to be a growing hunger among our people to intentionally study books of the Bible. We celebrate a huge number of groups this semester digging in together to Daniel, James, Hebrews, Galatians, Ephesians, Revelation and others.

We’re very grateful for the huge number of mature spiritual leaders we have and the consistent engagement by so many people in small groups this semester. We hope to build upon this momentum as we look to our January launch!

New Faces
We're always excited to see new faces on our team, and this quarter we've seen two new people interested in auditions for our vocal team!

Upgrades - Let There Be Light!
The lighting upgrade is officially complete for the atrium, sanctuary, and stage areas consisting of a little over 100 total fixtures!  This huge undertaking has been over a year in the making, and we're seeing the results with bright light levels in the atrium and sanctuary when appropriate, as well as soft worship and prayer lighting during the service.  The effect these lights will also have on our electrical budget will be encouraging as well.  Special thanks to Frank and Erica Pierce, who were involved on the ground level throughout the installation process and gave so much of their time to see this project become a reality!

We also are working to upgrade a few tech areas to incorporate two separate media feeds to atrium TVs for our future Atrium Project improvements.

Baptism Sunday, Growth, and Flow
Sunday Support is excited to welcome new team members to Safety, Greeter, and Usher Teams this quarter.

Baptism Sunday was a huge success! There were 17 scheduled baptisms, and 8 spontaneous baptisms, totaling 25 people saying yes to living for Christ! We were able to provide lunch for each participant from one of the food trucks on site. It was good time of fellowship and celebration.

We are currently working on creating a strategy to onboard new team members. We are also thinking through Atrium logistics to help create a better flow on Sunday morning.  Our dreams are coming true! We are in constant brainstorm mode on how to create the most inviting and informative environment for both our guests and members.

Marquita's Story
Marquita Williams was one of participants on Baptism Sunday. She and her husband have suffered some hardship. She is fairly new at our church but decided to be baptized with us. Her baptism was very moving and led to a member of our church praying for her and asking the congregation to join in prayer during the baptism. We followed up with Marquita afterwards and she expressed interest in becoming a member. She was connected to Lisa McLemore, who met Marquita at our Membership Social. Marquita became a member and now wants to serve! We have introduced her to the many serving possibilities and she is eagerly anticipating getting started. She even signed up to help with Breathe Respite Night! Lisa and Marquita still meet periodically. We can't wait to see how God moves in Marquita's life!

Discipleship Pathway
We've been in the process of updating Discipleship Pathway. Instead of a one time meeting, Discover Heritage will be a six week small group facilitated by some of our seasoned leaders.

Brad has been reshaping the Discover Heritage material (he recently shared the material in Sunday morning services earlier this fall),  and is covering much of this material in monthly equipping sessions. The goal is for newcomers not only to learn who we are as a faith community and how they can connect, but also to connect in relationship with one another as well as with some seasoned leaders who can then guide them to a next step.

As a part of the Discover Heritage process, we will also have a quarterly membership social which will enable newcomers to become acquainted with staff and leadership.