Pinelake’s Story
It’s hard to believe that what began in a mobile chapel located on Spillway Road in February of 1971 would grow to become the church that we experience today, where people from all over Mississippi join together in multiple locations for worship each Sunday.
Our journey has involved three Senior Pastors since the launch of the church, all providing timely and God-given leadership during their tenure. In January 1999 God brought Dr. Chip Henderson, Pinelake’s Senior Pastor, to lead the congregation. Shortly afterwards, God blessed our church with seasons of rapid growth and it was quickly apparent there would not be enough space at the Spillway Road location for what God intended to do.
A little over a year later, in February 2000 the leadership of the church was led to begin an aggressive search for a new location that would provide the necessary room to reach more people. In November 2000, the church met on land off of Lakeland Drive in Flowood, MS to dedicate the immense and beautiful 170 acres that God had provided as a new location.
By November 2003, the new facility was completed and the Pinelake congregation held its first services at the Reservoir campus. And while the new facilities were wonderful, it was the journey with God over the previous five years that would forever mark the people and remind them that church isn’t about buildings, but about God working in His people.
After three more years of rapid growth, in 2006, the Pinelake Elders and Senior Leadership Team felt God leading the church to expand through launching additional campuses in Mississippi. In the fall of 2006, the church launched the second Pinelake campus in the Madison area. In January of 2009, Pinelake launched its third campus in Clinton, Mississippi. In 2011, the fourth campus in the Starkville area launched. In 2015, the fifth Pinelake campus was launched in Oxford. Today, more than 11,000 people attend weekly worship at one of Pinelake’s five campuses.
We believe Pinelake is a movement of God, and we have yet to see the end of God’s action plan for our church. Pinelake remains a church committed to seeing Mississippi changed one Life Change Story at a time. Our mission is to help people Learn from Christ, Live in Christ and Lead others to Christ.