We are number 13!

Perhaps some of you have heard already but Forsyth County has been placed on a national list. Forbes magazine listed Forsyth County, GA as the 13th richest county in America. (America's Richest Counties - Forbes.com)

Here is an excerpt from our entry on the list:

Forsyth County has a median income of $83,682. Georgia isn't one of the country's biggest states, but it is made up of more counties than any other. The result? Counties post specific demographics. Take Forsyth. It's a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area, but the median household pulls in $33,000 more a year than neighboring Fulton County.

What does that mean for Big Creek Church? With all that wealth in this county we shouldn't have any problems, correct? People in Forsyth County should be free from any needs, right? Of course not.

Certainly in an affluent county like Forsyth, it is harder to assess the needs. They don't seem as obvious and readily apparent, but the needs are HERE and they are REAL.

If we are willing to look we will find those in need.

To often the needs hide in the shadows and in the margins of our county. Have you ever been to the Homestead community that many at Big Creek church minister alongside? Did you have the opportunity to deliver a Thanksgiving meal to a needy Forsyth family, this past year? If you have, you know that people with needs are not out in the open. Especially people with physical and material needs in Forsyth are hidden away and out of sight. It requires us to be intentional and to design opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ to needy families and children in Forsyth county.

If we are willing to listen we can minister to those in need.

Even our neighbors who live among us, in our own neighborhoods are in great need. Behind the manicured lawns and the white picket fences are people unleashing a silent scream of pain. They are screaming in pain over broken marriages, fractured relationships with their children, and loneliness. Many are trying to anesthetize their pain with busyness, drugs, alcohol or internet pornography.

Are we willing to get into the lives of our neighbors and love and listen to them? I believe that they are giving us many clues to their need and brokenness but too often we, ourselves, get caught up in our own busyness, that we fail to take moments to invest time with them. Many times all it takes is a willingness to stop talking and just be willing to listen and care.

Forsyth County may be affluent and rich, but it won't ever be truly rich until people surrender to the love of Jesus. God has called us and Big Creek to be a lighthouse of love to those who broken, battered and bruised by life.

We have a wealth of opportunities to show people Jesus in this county by allowing them to see the power of the gospel in our own lives. I am excited about what God is currently doing but even more stoked with anticipation of what he is going to continue to do in the future in bringing gospel centered transformation to our community