New Hope Baptist Church will host an opening celebration for its new South Campus near Starr's Mill March 27.

The multipurpose education and worship center will accommodate 1,000 worshipers and features staging and lighting to rival Sams auditorium, according to associate pastor the Rev. Barry Thompson, who designed the facility with assistance from the architectural firm of Chapman, Griffin, Lanier, Sussenbach.

The first phase of the three-year expansion for New Hope is truly a financial miracle. Rejecting help from professional fund-raisers, Thompson said the New Hope congregation succeeded in raising $10.6 million, $3 million more than the professionals predicted. How did they do it? Prayer and good leadership, was Thompson's response.

Recalling how the church managed to purchase the 62-acre tract at the intersection of Ga. highways 74 and 85, Thompson said their fund-raising team, led by Steve Kinney, challenged the church's members to raise the entire $550,000 purchase price on one Sunday. The original proposal was to ask for half. But through divine intervention, the ante was raised and was met.

“We went to the closing with the check and five years of baptism records,” Thompson said. It turned out that the land owner was persuaded to sell the property when he learned that New Hope was a mission-minded, strong-on-evangelizing, church where he could create and leave a legacy.

New Hope maintains one phone number and one senior pastor, the Rev. John Avant, who ministers to both campuses, but the church's influence is worldwide. Currently, New Hope conducts missionary work in London, where Thompson claims only 1 percent of the population goes to church, Belarus, formerly Yugoslavia, and New York City.

“God's opened phenomenal doors,” Thompson said. “New Hope in Fayetteville, Ga. is touching the nation and touching the world.” He said there are exciting plans in store for their New York ministry and plans also are underway to send a missionary team to Africa.

Avant supports church's outreach in its mission statement, “To be a people in a relationship with God experiencing his reviving presence, enabling us to supernaturally impact our community, nation and world.”

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