Imagine this mix:

Take a public university in the Deep South, mix in 25,000 students, one visionary pastor, a come as you are mindset and place in the center of campus activity.  Call the mixture Hill of the Lord University Church, a relatively new church plant that takes being relevant to the new generation of college students very seriously.

John Timmerman, pastor of Hill of the Lord, and his wife Caroline planted the church on the University of South Carolina’s campus nearly 3 years ago after sensing God was moving them away from their home in Charleston to Columbia.  The Timmermans had been involved with Lighthouse Church in Mt. Pleasant but knew the next stage in their ministry would be with college students.

After much hours of prayer and countless meetings, Hill of the Lord was birthed on USC’s campus.  The church now meets in the Russell House student center, right in the center of all university activity.  Almost immediately the church began to pray about   how members could be involved in God’s purposes not only on campus, but around the world.

“One of the best things we have done at the church is adopt six core values that everything we do, talk about or teach is around one of these values.  One of the values we spent a lot of time on this year was kingdom and God’s church globally, not ours locally,” said Timmerman.

Small groups spent significant time on the kingdom value, talking through and praying about what God is doing around the world, and the young church felt moved to become active among the nations.

“It is really mind blowing how [the church] came around that value.”

Timmerman recalled one Sunday with 60 college students in attendance.  A yearly offering was taken that Sunday to go partly to campus ministries at USC and partly to international missions.  Those 60 students gave $1500.

“The rest of the church got so on board…to have the mindset of giving globally and on USC’s campus,” said Timmerman.

The church felt led to a mission relationship more meaningful than just a one-time trip and leadership began to pray about putting feet to their core kingdom value.  After considering other places around the world, Timmerman consulted a church member who is also a representative from the International Mission Board.  The church member mentioned the deep spiritual need in South Asia and told the pastor about the SC Baptist Convention’s partnership in the region.  The more the church prayed, the clearer the picture in South Asia became. 

“It was weird, because it was a part of the world we had not considered.  The more we prayed about it, the more we felt it was where we would end up.”

This summer, the Timmermans will take five of their collegiate leadership to India to begin what the church hopes is a lasting relationship.

“We didn’t want to go one place one summer then another place over Christmas.  We wanted to go back to the same place for a while.”

For now, Timmerman says the church is watching what God will do with a church yielded to a global mindset and kingdom thinking.