Rutherford Count, NC, also known as Small Town Friendly. Is an incredible place where God is doing some amazing things. Stick around to hear about all the incredible things God is doing in Small Town Friendly.
Transcripts
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Welcome to Small Town Big God.
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My name is Michael Collins.
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I'm the children's pastor at Element Church in Rutherford
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County, North Carolina, also known as Small Town Friendly.
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In every episode, I'm gonna be bringing you a story that shows how God is at
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work right here in Small Town Friendly.
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The idea behind this show, really came from another pastor at Element named J.
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R.
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Blanton.
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Welcome to Small Town Friendly.
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If you've ever been to Element, you've probably seen someone walking around with
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a t shirt that says Small Town Big God.
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And this was actually a line from a sermon that JR preached a while back.
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But instead of explaining exactly what we mean by that myself, I'm gonna
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play you a clip from an interview that I did with JR, where he is helping
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tell the story of Hope House Coffee.
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But in this clip, he really gets to the heart of what we
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mean by Small Town Big God.
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Look at my questions I had written down and I lost it.
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Small town friendly, my entire life.
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Always for about ten years I worked outside of.
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I got up, drove out of the county every day to other larger cities and work there.
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Then I'd come back home in the evenings and be home on the weekends.
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But there's a little bit of a impoverished mindset that is prevalent.
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I think it's probably true in a lot of small towns.
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And you know.
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Something that stirred in us many years ago is, you see
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that in scripture too, right?
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There's a great story in John 1, I think it's Philip.
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He has had an encounter with Jesus and he goes and he finds Nathaniel
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and he goes, man, I found the one come, come see the one it's,
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he's the Messiah without a doubt.
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Come see him.
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And it's, it's Joseph's son from Nazareth and Nathaniel has this
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line, he goes, Nazareth, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
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And that stirred in us many years ago that, man, we.
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And we need to deal with this poverty mindset that we have, that
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nothing good comes from small towns.
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Actually, the entire gospel, Jesus's life is like him doing
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great works in small towns, right?
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And, and, you know, from Bethlehem to Nazareth to all of, you know,
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these little towns and villages.
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scattered throughout Galilee.
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And, and, and so we, we kind of championed this slogan small town, big God.
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Yeah, it's a small town, but we serve a big God.
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When I joined the staff at Element in August of 2023, I had already
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been thinking about a podcast about Rutherford County, but after talking
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with JR about Small Town Big God and the mindset behind that line, I knew that
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that was what the show needed to be.
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So if you're listening to this and you happen to live in small town friendly,
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stick around because this is for you.
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And if you aren't in Rutherford County, well, I hope that you'll enjoy hearing
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about some of the amazing things our big God is doing in a small town.
