Dear Great Hills family,

I hope that you had a wonderful time at Christmas with Christ and your family and friends -- the Millers did!  Danny and his family are in Virginia with Ashley's sister's family and are having a good time there.  He asked me to write a year-end blog to you about our very significant 2011.

To review a sampling of what God has done in 2011 -- both in us and through us at Great Hills -- let me share with you 11 ways that we are becoming a radiant church that glows with the love of Jesus that is upward in worship, inward in discipleship, and outward in evangelism and missions.  In our worship services you will begin to hear some testimonies from new and long-time members who are having their worlds rocked and lives changed through what God is doing in them through the 11 ministries below.  The order, dates, and details of these 11 ministries are not important.  What is important is that these are just 11 of the ways that Jesus is conforming us to be like His holy personality (Romans 8:28-29), so that we can think like Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:16) and so that we can act like Jesus (Philippians 2:4-5):

1.  In 2011 we have been most directly edified by the preaching and teaching of God's Word by our Lead Pastor, Danny Forshee.  Since God called Danny here in June 2010, we have been blessed by his extraordinary preaching and teachingweek after week.  I know it's great preaching when it gets through to an old dog like me who has heard lots of great preaching in my 51 years from my dad's wonderful preaching when I was born and after, through Preacher's years here, then Michael Lewis' years, and many others.  I have been blessed by many.  Come to think of it, my dad, Preacher, and Michael all agree with us that we are blessed to have Danny here leading us and preaching to us.  I often can't tell if I am more encouraged or more convicted, and that is how the ministry of the Word works.  I am grateful for Danny's bold transparency that has given his preaching bold authority in our lives these 18 months.

2.  The rest of our new staff members are doing awesome as well.

• Terry Hurt, our Worship Pastor, has done an excellent job in training and leading the orchestra, choir, band, and worship singers to become transparent and powerful worship leaders who help lead us into God's Presence every service.  While we knew that moving into one service with one worship style in August would be an adjustment for everybody in different ways, our worship of God is becoming more intimate and compelling each week.
• James Myers, our College & Singles pastor, has done a great job serving and leading the college, young singles, and singles.  In addition, he has helped Brian with our new and growing small group ministry, led one of our two pastoral team small groups this fall, and provided pastoral leadership to our great men's and women's ministries.
• Laura Clontz, our Radiant Kids Director, has done a great job serving and leading our birth through 6th graders and their families, and has launched a new BLG ministry, FLIGHT for 5th and 6th graders.  Also, Laura has the unique joy of being a young lady on our pastoral team, to which she brings lots of insight, maturity, planning, and attention to detail.

3.  As Danny shared several weeks ago, we have a rapidly growing widows' ministry.  This is not a token effort, but one that involves scores of people reaching out to scores of widows (James 1:27).  We are grateful for Ross Hartsfield and Russell Hartsfield, and the deacons for their leadership to our widows.

4.  One-on-one, in small groups, and in large groups we have reached out to our homeless neighbors in 78759 and around Austin more than ever in 2011. In addition to that, every week our benevolence ministry continues to help many of our neighbors going through tough times with food, clothes, and payments towards their rent or electrical bill.

5.  Our Sunday morning Bible Life Groups continue to provide Christlike fellowship and strong biblical and practical teaching for all our people from birth to seniors.  We are grateful for so many workers, teachers, and directors who serve so faithfully year after year.  Thank you.

6.  Complementing our BLG, we have now had one year of church-wide small group ministry in homes with ongoing leadership training results in about 300 people in 30 small groups in homes.  This fall everyone worked through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 using "Life's Healing Choices" parallel to Danny's most-important sermon series on the Beatitudes, "The Blessed Life."

7.  We have now four years of life-changing ministry through our Monday night Celebrate Recovery.  Following Jesus' healing and maturing process in the eight Beatitudes of Matthew 5, CR gives followers of Christ a safe place to get healthy and free from their hurts, habits, and hang-ups.  And by the way, if you think CR is just for those people with "real problems," then you have the worst problem of all --denial about your own sin and selfishness!   Ask God if He wants you to be a part of CR in 2012.

8.  In our 35th year of TV ministry on KVUE Sunday mornings at 10:00 am, God is doing more and more amazing things during Danny's 18 months on TV. You will hear more about that in our testimonies. Through DFEA on DIRECTV, our broadcast is seen around the country to a growing audience and our ghbc.org web presence is quickly growing through the live broadcasts and dozens of archived services available on our website.

9.  We had our best year ever of missions to Austin, Texas, the US, and the world.  More and better trips have yielded a deeper impact by more people than every before in our ten-year mission history.  We are very grateful for our Missions and Administration pastor, Mike Mericle, and his Missions Team for our compelling Global Impact Celebration in April, prayer and financial support to our missions partners, our December 4th Missions Sunday Celebration, and for making it possible for hundreds of us to swarm Austin and the world with the grace gospel of Jesus Christ.

10.  You.  Yes, you.  .Since the church of Jesus Christ is just a bunch of individuals brought together by the Holy Spirit under the authority of our Heavenly Father to live and walk through life together, the most important thing that is changing around Great Hills is each one of us. Each week Danny tells us how God is transforming him -- often painfully (Praise the Lord for the sale of the Forshees' Arkansas house!) -- but Danny submits his will to his Father. Thus, as we are learning how Jesus is discipling Danny, we can learn how to be discipled to Christ, and in turn disciple each other.  This is why we have a discipleship process that we are learning to follow:  Connecting - Evangelizing - Saving - Baptizing - Discipling -Serving - Worshipping - Giving - Going - Discipling.  Ask God where you are on this journey, especially; are you at step 5, being discipled?  Are you at step 10, discipling someone else?  Thanks for being willing to obey God and be here with us at the start of 2012 so that God can change us and work through us ...more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).

11.  Jesus Christ. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has been with us in 2011, and He will be with us as much as we ask Him to be in 2012.  Jesus said in John 12:32, And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself. As we worship Jesus in our hearts and lives, He will be lifted up at our church, and our church will be a "city of refuge" for people in Austin.

Please pray through this list above and ask God two things.  Ask Him to bless His work at Great Hills, and ask Him to show you how and where He wants you to be on mission with us in 2012.  As your pastor-shepherds we are not called to do the ministry of the church -- you are.  We are called to equip you to do what God has called you to do (Ephesians 4:12; 2:10).

Let me highlight some important things happening in the next couple of weeks.

• First, I want to say thank you to the hundreds of you who gave so generously to our Operation Christmas Child and Angel Tree ministries in November and December.  May God bless you many times over for giving to a child in Central Texas or across the world.
• Saturday, December 31 - Contributions to GHBC will be accepted for 2011 until midnight.  After that, they will be credited to 2012.  Please pray about what God would have you give to catch us up at the end of the year. Thank you!
• Sunday, January 1 - Chad Hampton, our Student Pastor, will be preaching a sermon entitled "Taking Turns" from Ephesians 1:15-23.  There is a lot we can learn from the basic gesture of taking turns as we respond to God's gift of grace.
• Thursday, December 29 through Monday, January 2 - Our church offices will be closed in observance of New Year's Day.
• Sunday, January 8 - Danny will be preaching his annual State-of-the-Church sermon.  You will not want to miss it as you will hear how we are doing and where we are going.
• Sunday, January 22 at 6:00 pm - We will have our spring Small Group Connection Event in the Worship Center and sign up for small groups.  There will be more groups than ever meeting in living rooms all over Central Texas, so please plan on coming and signing up.

Three final prayer requests that are from my heart to yours.

First, pray for 2012 at Great Hills.  I have been here since 1983 and I have never had this much anticipation about the coming year.  I have had several roles that have allowed me to know about our trials over the past couple of decades and years, but likewise I know that "our best days are ahead" and that to God's glory, just as Great Hills has been truly great in the past, we will be great for Him in the future.  God takes churches through sanctification just like He takes us as individuals through sanctification -- for His glory and for His purposes.

Second, please pray for our January trip to Moldova and Turkey, the first mission trip of 2012!  Jill Tew, Kate McDonald, Laura Clontz, and I will travel on our second trip together to counsel and encourage the staff and girls at Freedom Home Moldova, a sex-trafficking recovery home in Chisinau.  After that we will fly to Turkey to help host and teach our Freedom Home Istanbul Summit to encourage and equip about fifty workers for Jesus-powered sex-trafficking ministry for Central Asia (the five "stans":  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- the frontiers of the Kingdom of God).  If God moves you to give, please send a check to church with "Moldova trip" in the memo line.

Third, please pray for God to make His direction clear for our Unengaged Unreached People Group (UUPG) in 2012, so we can visit them and begin planning how to serve and reach them for Christ.  Adopting this UUPG will revolutionize our church like nothing we have ever done, starting with the reality that some of you reading this will surrender your lives to be our own GHBC-sent missionaries to this UUPG.  You have not been called yet, but you may be starting to feel the Holy Spirit tug (Do you feel it?).

Thanks for being with us in this battle for God's Kingdom 2011 and may God bless you and your family in 2012!

Kyle Miller

Executive Pastor

for Danny Forshee, Lead Pastor

2 Peter 1:2-4