Raising the Spiritual Temperature

When Kevin Haseltine first stepped into the pulpit at Access Church in 2000, he encountered a congregation on the verge of shutting down.

Located in North Branch, Minnesota, a city of just over 10,000 about 40 miles north of the Twin Cities, the church hadn’t had a full-time pastor in over a year. The congregation had dwindled to only a dozen attendees, and the district had contemplated closing its doors until Haseltine, who had been an associate pastor in nearby Wyoming, Minnesota, accepted the lead pastor role.

In his first few months, Haseltine and congregants began strategizing ways to engage the community. Haseltine joined the local chamber of commerce and the Rotary club, and the church began organizing outreaches within the city.

“Our first vision was to raise the spiritual temperature of the whole community,” Haseltine says. “We hit the ground running with community events, just to let people know the church is here. And that drew some people.”

Within a year, the congregation had grown to 100 regular attendees. Today, the church has 500 attendees on a regular basis and has opened a satellite campus in the nearby town of Isanti. In its second year, the Isanti campus draws around 100 people each week and also heavily focuses on outreach in the community of 5,400.

Shaheen Eydgahi, who has been attending Access Church since 2001 and now pastors the Isanti campus, says one of the most important shifts started in 2007, when the church modified its approach to worship and sermons in order to be more intentional in reaching the increasing number of non-Christians walking through its doors.

“Knowing that the majority of unchurched people still ‘try’ church on a Sunday or weekend, we decided to utilize those services as our greatest outreach tool,” Eydgahi says. “The message about Jesus Christ has stayed the same, and we still talk about what God wants to see in our lives, but the method in which we present that truth has changed dramatically. Instead of talking to only Christians, in a way only they understand, we talk to everyone.” 

Haseltine continues to be excited by how the church is reaching the community’s unchurched.

On Easter this year, Haseltine says 74 people prayed to accept Jesus as Savior.

While the church’s turnaround is already a testimony, Haseltine says there’s still more work to be done.

“We’re the largest church in our community, which is really great, but there’s still thousands of people in the community who do not know God,” Haseltine says. “We have a long way to go.”

Ian Richardson

Ian Richardson is a 2014 graduate of Evangel University and former intern with the Pentecostal Evangel. He is originally from Afton, Iowa, where he grew up as the son of an Assemblies of God pastor.