Healing Place Church - Baton Rouge

We's passin' through Leesiana, or as they say in Rhode Island Louisianner.

Driving down I-10, we saw this Methodist Disaster response truck towing a trailer. The guys in the front seat looked like Roger Stedman and Kenny Piquette. Made us think. Hmmmmmmmmm. Not a bad idea.

Why is it that we seem to hit some of these churches with Dream Center's on days with pouring rain?

Healing Place Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a huge church, I mean HUGE. They are building a brand new sanctuary that is nearly complete. Looks like the Ryan Center at URI, you can see the photo above. Well, in the south there are lots of Big churches, but what makes this place unique is that they have built there entire ministry around Service. Service to their community, to their neighbors, to people of various ethnic backgrounds. This is also a Multi-site church, with a Spanish language site, two other locations and a Dream Center based in the very economically depressed town of Donaldsville, LA which is surrounded by Oil refineries, and as a piece of history, served as a temporary Capital of the confederacy in 1861, before it was moved to Montgomery.

We drove by the Donaldsville site. It's very basic, an old brick building. But it serves as a resource center for the community. Again, like the Seacoast church in South Carolina, Free medical services, and dental services to those without insurance, Pro Bono legal help, counseling, job training, homework resources for children.

I'm really surprised at what I'm finding on this trip. A lot of churches are going multi-site and all out on service ministry. And the service ministry is serious stuff. This is not just handing people something, these churches are going deep in to people's lives. They are getting inside families with serious problems. This is impressive, and inspiring.


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