The next day, Bethel members mobilized to clean and repair the church as best they could, then went to work serving the community. The following Saturday, they came together to help the community by going to homes to cut down trees and “extend a hand of love,” García said. 

God also opened doors for the church to distribute food provided by an aid organization from Mississippi while the power was being restored. Church members set up a distribution site in their gym to distribute food, cleaning supplies, and toiletries to those impacted by the storm.

Though hurting themselves, García said the storms provided a great opportunity for Bethel to fulfill its mission: to love God, love people, and serve others.

“That’s part of who we are,” García said. “If there’s something to be done, we’ll be there to serve and show them the love of Christ.”

Dick Wooten has since become a friend and encourager to Visy. In addition to some 30 from Grace Waco who came south to help the new church plant, around eight to nine from the elder Wooten’s former congregation ended up joining Grace Hewitt. Wooten himself stayed. He preaches from time to time at Visy’s invitation.

“He has been really encouraging to me, especially seeing us through a very rough first year,” Visy said of Wooten. “He said, ‘Michael, I’m retired. I just want to love on people, invest in them, care for them.’”

Visy added that “having a seasoned guy in his 70s” to walk alongside him in ministry has been a blessing. Visy asked Wooten to share recollections of the church at Grace Hewitt’s fifth anniversary.

“I wanted the congregation to see that God was faithful to His people and His church long before we were in this building,” Visy said. Now in his 30s, Visy was only 26 when he became pastor at Grace Hewitt.

“I was fresh out of seminary, newly married. Why in the world would you want to follow a 26-year-old?” he recalled mentioning to the congregation back then.

“We’re not following you. We’re following the Lord,” members replied.

Today, Grace Hewitt is thriving, running around 150 with members and regular attenders, children, and visitors, demonstrating steady growth despite population mobility in its “suburban-rural” setting.

“Hewitt is a family-centered community,” said Visy. He and his wife, Michelle, have become parents to Harper, 4, and Gus, 2, during their time at the church.

“There are a lot of kids running around our church,” Visy said. “And there’s only one full-time staff person: me,” he added with a chuckle.

‘It came out of nowhere’

Ward recalled waking with a start around 2 a.m. the next morning to the sound of hail pounding his property.

“It came out of nowhere,” he said. “No lightning or thunder. It just started immediately. High winds, heavy hail … probably for 20 to 30 minutes. The power went out pretty quickly.”

The Ward home, located on the south side of town, escaped the worst of the damage as the storm struck the north side with unanticipated ferocity. Some thought it was a tornado, Ward said, although the National Weather Service has only confirmed the microburst.

Ward stayed up most of the rest of the night, watching to see if anything else was coming. Dawn revealed downed power lines and trees shorn of their leaves and branches. Ward estimated that he later raked up 15 bags of leaves, as did his neighbors. 

A handful of church families were affected by damage at their farms and homes. No members were injured, but some collected buckets full of dead birds, likely victims of large hailstones.

Hailstones also piled up around the church, which suffered broken windows and damage to its roof. A courtyard flooded, causing water to spread inside the foyer and into a section of the sanctuary. Members quickly showed up to help shovel hail away from the doors to prevent further water damage as the hail melted. Cleaners estimated they pumped out 600 gallons of water from the facility.

But with the inconvenience came opportunity.

Expanding its reach

Long before that day, First Odessa—with a mission to reach its city and the world with the gospel of Christ—saw an urgent need to connect with the growing number of Hispanic people coming to the community to work in the oil industry. With nearly 60% of the city’s population being Hispanic, church leaders wondered, “How are we going to reach Odessa if we don’t speak Spanish?”

First Odessa already had a Spanish Bible class meeting at the church. It was led by its only Hispanic couple at the time—Roberto Chavez and his wife Aracely, who is Hiram’s sister. As the class began to grow, church leaders began to pray about taking the next steps to broaden its reach. They eventually purchased a building across the street to use for a Hispanic church. All they needed was a pastor. 

At the time, Hiram lived in his native Mexico and, other than making an annual visit to Odessa to visit Aracely and her family, had never considered leaving. During one of his visits, in 2019, Aracely told Hiram about First Odessa’s vision of starting a Hispanic work and asked him to join her in praying for the man God would call to serve as its pastor. 

“So I crossed the street from the church and started walking around the building [the church had purchased for the Hispanic work],” Hiram said, “praying that God would bring a pastor who would love the work.” 

He never imagined he would be the one God would choose to call to lead the Hispanic work.

The Equip Conference is designed to resource churches by providing tools and training to anyone serving in the local church, including lay people. Why is it so important for the SBTC to offer this kind of training?

Phil Todd: It’s always great to be a learner, to continue to improve, to continue to sharpen your skills. Equip offers that opportunity at an individual level. A study in Georgia showed that churches that were engaged in regular ongoing training of their leaders were growing churches because they’re equipping their leaders to be the best  they can be. So Equip is a great opportunity for the SBTC to come alongside churches and provide training that hopefully they’ll be able to continue in their own context.

As you talk with leaders in SBTC churches, what are they communicating to you that they need in terms of training and how is Equip being responsive to that? 

PT: We meet with pastors in a lot of different settings and many of our breakout topics are driven by those conversations, such as how to teach a lesson or how to ask the best questions in a small group setting or a Sunday school setting. We’ve crafted several Equip breakouts that address that issue this year. We also have pastors who talk about equipping their people to defend their faith, so we have an apologetics track this year. Security issues always seem to be brought to the forefront due to the relevancy of that topic for our churches, so we always offer church security breakouts to better equip churches to secure their people and their facilities. We also get a lot of requests for training in the areas of children and preschool ministry, and I would say those tracks we offer at Equip are top-notch, as we have some of the top leaders from around the country coming in to lead breakouts.

I also want to mention that we have partnered with our missions department to expand our missions breakout trainings at Equip, and I think that will be instrumental in helping churches launch people out. We want to help churches learn how to partner in missions and send people on short-term and long-term mission trips. We’ve also partnered with our church planting team [Send Network SBTC] to offer training at Equip for churches on how to raise people up to be church planters.

What’s a growing area of interest in terms of training that might surprise some people? 

PT: The last two Equips we’ve had, the worship tracks have always drawn full rooms. So, we’ve expanded our worship ministry track this year. I’m excited about that. We have access to several breakout speakers who are really leading well in their areas of worship and allowing us to expand our worship ministry networks. These leaders are very effective at raising up the next generation of worship leaders, starting even at the preschool level, and they are even seeing students and youth equipped to lead in the main worship/praise band. Equipping church worship ministries can be a multi-generational approach, so we’re offering tracks along those lines about how to raise up that next generation.