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What is the church’s role in cultural renewal?

Jack Hilligoss, mayor of Lake Wales, Florida, and pastor of High Point Church, joins us as we explore how the local church can—and arguably must—bring Christ’s dominion into politics, business, education, media, and beyond.

You will walk away inspired and equipped with practical wisdom on bold leadership, overcoming “paralysis by analysis,” and how faithful fruit can grow even in failure.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello and welcome again to our episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us Jack Hill. Agus. Jack, welcome.

Jack Hilligoss:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Marlin Detweiler:

Jack is the pastor of a thriving church that's only a couple miles away from where I live in Florida when I'm here, and I am thrilled to have you on our podcast today. Thank you for joining us.

Jack Hilligoss:

I appreciate the invitation.

Marlin Detweiler:

You will tell us a little bit about yourself first, your education, your family and your career, and then we'll jump in and learn a little bit about hi.

Jack Hilligoss:

Okay. Well, education wise, I graduated from Warner University, which is only about 7 or 8 miles from us right here in Lake Wales, Florida finished with a bachelor's degree in church ministries. And that's it really. As far as formal education goes, everything else has been the school of hard knocks. So.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. And yeah, I've heard you lament that you don't have a seminary degree as a pastor. And I want you to know, I've heard you preach enough to think that maybe you're better off without it.

Jack Hilligoss:

Well, could be could be, try not to tweak too many noses when I talk that way.

Marlin Detweiler:

But yeah, I don't literally mean that we love seminary degrees for things that we hire. But not everything fits that way, that's for sure.

Jack Hilligoss:

I have, you know, I've always wanted to do it. I jumped right into pastoral ministry out of college and then had a family, and it just never quite fit the schedule for me, so.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, you have been at your church, High Point Church, for since 1997, 1997. Okay. Tell us how you came up with the is it the mission statement or the purpose that is simply love God, love people?

Jack Hilligoss:

Yeah. That was the result of a we had an all staff, all elders retreat about gosh, 10 or 12 years ago where we were trying to simplify what we were communicating to people. And believe it or not, those four words took us about 2.5 hours to get to.

Marlin Detweiler:

The elegance of simplicity does not come easily.

Jack Hilligoss:

Yeah, yeah. Because you want to say more than people need to hear on the front end. And preachers are especially bad at that. So I had to be disciplined by the folks that were around me to get it boiled down, because my vision statement was three paragraphs long and included words that nobody will ever use.

Marlin Detweiler:

That is too funny. Yeah. So I mean, let me ask you, say, how did it boil itself down and when did you have the light bulb moment. That's it. Because when I see it, I know that's it.

Jack Hilligoss:

Yeah. It simply was us talking around a table. What do we exist to do? And of course, we said, well, what did Jesus tell us to do? And that led to a conversation of what's the greatest commandment in all of Scripture, that interaction that he had there in the New Testament? The greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

The second is like it love your neighbor as yourself. So we just took that. Love God, love people. That's our mandate from Christ. And that's easy. And it sticks and people remember it. And we can do everything we do kind of fits with that.

Marlin Detweiler:

So what distinguishes the church today? How would you describe where you are compared to where you've been and where you think you're going?

Jack Hilligoss:

Oh my goodness. Well, I will celebrate my 29th year as the senior pastor this May. So we've been through several iterations. When I arrived at it was Burns Avenue Church of God. When I arrived in the first year we were here, our average attendance was 90 on a weekend. So I tell people that I feel like I've pastored five different churches but the same congregation the whole time because we've grown through all of these iterations.

And so the growth of the church has really been attached to my growth as a leader, because every time you get to a certain size, you realize that you've got to change the way you lead, and the church always gets bottlenecked around my leadership. And once I'm able to make the changes that I need to make, it seems like we go to another another level of effectiveness.

So when you know, if you visit us 29 years ago, we were a very typical small little mom and pop kind of church. And now we're a decent sized congregation. There's a lot more complexity. So.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, you just built a new facility. Yeah. And I've heard you say recently that you're looking at going from three services to four. Yeah. And yeah, it doesn't sound to me like just a little thing.

Jack Hilligoss:

Well, and it's been especially fantastic the last four. You mentioned that we moved to a new location about four years ago, five years ago in January, and we had about 11 years in the church had grown pretty well. And I wrote a document that described in all it was called Providence Center. It was a vision for us to put the church at the center of a disciple and community, and we knew we needed more land to do what we really wanted to do.

But it was intimidating. We waited a while when we finally got it done about five years ago was when we took off again. And so these last several years, yeah, the church has grown a lot faster than we expected it to, frankly. So yeah, we're in conversations now for adding our fourth worship service. In fact, tomorrow and staff, we're going to be discussing that very thing.

Marlin Detweiler:
So well that's a that's a lot of repetition for the pastor.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah. Yeah it is. I found out it's kind of like running a marathon. Running. You just have to get yourself in shape to do it and understand that the first few weeks you do it, you're going to be worn out, and then you kind of get into the rhythm.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, yeah. Well, well, I picked up something, I told you I was going to do this. You may know, was it on your website that I got this? I'm not sure. Okay. Well, let me read this quote because I want you to talk about in 2008, pastor Jack, you, through the study of Scripture and prayer, felt a growing conviction that the local church needed to bring the influence of the kingdom to every part of the culture in which it was located. Yeah. Where did that come from?

Jack Hilligoss:
It was one of those mornings where you're reading the word and the Spirit of God grabs your attention and forces you to focus on one verse. And it was Ephesians 310. His eternal purpose was that now through the church, his manifold wisdom should be made known to all the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. And it's just it.

I have the Church of God, the group that I'm affiliated with, has always had what I felt like was a great theology of the church. Okay. And so I always had a love affair for the church. But in my I think my understanding of the church was fairly truncated. And that verse led me on a lot of researching about not just how we do, you know, church things, but what is the role of the church in society in general?

His manifold wisdom must extend beyond sacraments in the word. It has to extend to other parts of life. And I mentioned just a few minutes ago the providence in our document was out of that. That I drafted that document, which I just put in front of our elders, and I told them, I feel like this is the kind of church we have to become.

And that's a church that brings the influence of the King into every area of life education, media, arts, entertainment, government, everything. And that to me is discipleship. It's equipping Christian people to understand their mandate to bring the influence of Christ to every part of life.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, that does very well. But one of the things that's interesting to me is out of in the reformed world in which I live now, and that has been a very significant conversation that was attractive to us as one of the reasons we got involved in classical Christian education. And so there are a what it's what seems to me to be the case is God working in various communities and in various traditions to bring about the sense of understanding that we're talking about restoring cultures and not just dealing with people, just individuals.

00:09:03:09 - 00:09:12:00
Marlin Detweiler:

How did can you were there things that we might have read that you that I might have read, that you might have read, or where did the other influences come from?

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah, I would tell you that my conviction about that and my commitment to it has deepened incredibly in the last 4 or 5 years. So this is kind of how it developed for me. I'm kind of a might get you mentioned I don't have a theology degree. And so all of my education has been about just reading, reading, reading whatever I could get my hands on.

And the early iterations of that vision actually were coming from more of a charismatic perspective. Gentleman named Lance of all. No Vol. No, I think so. And I found things about him that made me a little leery about his doctrine.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay.

Jack Hilligoss:
But his vision of the seven mountains of the of a culture was the first place that I begin to think that way. But then in 2020, when Cote when the Covid thing came along, in different ways, I got exposed to guys like Joe Boot. His Mission of God book. And through him, other reformed authors.

Doug Wilson is a big one. Oh, Andrew Sandal and people like that. And they were. It's the same kind of idea, but much better, richer biblical grounding. I had never heard about covenant theology or anything. Okay. And just I so much of what they wrote resonated to me. So I probably read more reformed theology in the last five years than it'd be hard to find someone that beats me. I think.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's funny. Well, I'm not going to go down the path of how that's affected your theology or biblical theology, but rather the practical theology is really where I'd like to stay focused. You've taken that literally yourself. Tell us about your second career.

Jack Hilligoss:
Oh, yes. Well, and again, that all of so my second careers in politics. So I tell folks, if they ever have to listen to me, I'm a preacher and a politician, so God help you if you've got to listen to me give a speech. But but yeah, in our little town. And again, it was all around Covid, and I think Covid was a real wake up call for a lot of people that we saw things happen in our country that we just I don't think we realized how close we were to some really terrible things.

And in our little town, things that we would have never believed would happen here did start to bleed in. And things were being done on the city commission level that I felt like were ungodly and going to have a terrible impact on our city. And we had a very controversial election. And shortly after the election, the commissioner that was in my district, my seat lost her seat.

She was arrested for a for a felony. So this became open and I was approached by different members of the city to accept an appointment, which I agreed to do on an eight eight month term till they could do a special election. And then after that, I was asked to run for mayor. Which I wasn't crazy about that idea but you know, you pray about that.

And I felt, you know, I was talking so much about politics at that point that basically what I was hearing was put up or shut up.

Marlin Detweiler:
And so I put my head, that's tough to argue with.

Jack Hilligoss:
Right? So I put my hat in the ring and I won. So I've been serving I actually won reelection just last spring.

Marlin Detweiler:
I had the pleasure of being allowed to vote for you. It just. All right, I did. Yeah.

Jack Hilligoss:
So well thank you. I appreciate the vote. So I'm in my second term as the mayor of Lake Wales.

Marlin Detweiler:
So how do you balance the responsibilities of a dynamic and fast growing church with the responsibilities and demands of a fast growing community?

Jack Hilligoss:
Well, I think the thing that makes that possible is I have really good people working around me. And both of those our church has an executive pastor who is a crackerjack, things are run very well. And so I only have to I only work directly with our full time staff and everything else runs like clockwork. And then our city manager in Lake Wales is also exceptionally good at his job.

And it's a policy governance. It's an amazing thing. When I threw my hat in the ring for mayor, I went to a meeting with a man that had served as a state senator in Florida and he said, and I was telling him how apprehensive I was because I didn't feel qualified to be the mayor of a city.

And he said, if you can run a church you can run a city. And I took that. And I'm beginning to find out that that's true because the way we structure our governance at the church is pretty much the way the governance of the city is structured.

Marlin Detweiler:
The policy, I forget the term, I'm part of a board that actually is run that way. Policy governance. What's the term.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah policy governance is what we call it. So the elders of our church set guiding policies and then day to day is in the hands of the staff. And really the same thing happens in the city level. It's policy governance. There's a different name for it but it's the same thing.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I would have expected you to say because I've known you to be so organized and be able to work within good structures like that really effectively. I have seen you. I've heard you preach on several occasions and one of the things that I love is to hear how winsome and blunt at the same time you can be.

Marlin Detweiler:
My wife has told a story of how effective you were to talk about the immigration controversies that we deal with presently mostly at a national level. Yeah, yeah, today. And how clear and biblical you were. This is a little bit of asking the fish about the water. And I know you're not supposed to do that but I'm going to do it anyway.

Okay. How is it that you became so you developed the ability to be so honest and so winsome while being so clearly biblical, like.

Jack Hilligoss:
Wow, I don't know. Yeah, you're right, that is a fish and water question. I don't know, you know, I,

Marlin Detweiler:
Where do you draw the line between I can say this or I can't say this?

Jack Hilligoss:
Well, I think probably I ask myself how I would want someone to talk to me and wow.

Marlin Detweiler:
What a great answer.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah, I think most people are not. So I think people want to hear the truth as long as they feel like you care about them when you're saying it to them. And that's probably the big difference. So I always ask myself, I feel like I have a responsibility to tell the truth, you know, especially, you know, the word.

What does the word say? But then also, you know, Scripture says speak the truth in love. So I always ask myself, well, how would I want someone to say this to me? Not necessarily that I would be happy to hear it but at least I would feel like they weren't attacking me.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. So you know what that sounds like? Love God. Love people.

Jack Hilligoss:
There you go.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's incredible. Now, what else is going to come out of a Providence Center and High Point Church? What do we have to look forward to? We didn't mention the school that you started. It's not a classical Christian school. Talk to us about the vision for the school a little bit. And then maybe other things that you see coming out of the church.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah, we started the school three years ago when governor DeSantis signed House Bill one here in the state of Florida and tax dollars started following the families that there was no excuse remaining. And I would say to any church you should start a school. If we're going to I my line is that if you want to change a situation, win an election. But if you want to change the world, build schools, start schools.

Marlin Detweiler:
I agree.

Jack Hilligoss:
You know, discipleship is education. Education is discipleship. And if we don't get back education, we're going to lose. So we just we'd been hoping for it praying for it. Our constituency at High Point is a very middle middle class constituency. So the expense of private education was prohibitive right? When that happened it opened the doors for us.

Marlin Detweiler:
So anyway that excuse or that obstacle.

Jack Hilligoss:
Right. And there's no excuses anymore. So we did it and it's it's going great. We're up to seventh grade. Our plan to say okay to K through 12, 240 students right now with a waiting list and 29 staff. And it's not classical Christian but I just finished the book you sent to me or gave to me.

Marlin Detweiler:
And which one?

Jack Hilligoss:
Saving the American mind.

Marlin Detweiler:
Battle for the American mind.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah yeah yeah there you go. And yeah there you go. That's the one. And so I've actually bought copies for all of our directors and we're discussing it together.

Marlin Detweiler:
I'll have to call. I don't have access to Pete Hegseth under his current role, but I'll have to tell David good. When I get a royalty.

Jack Hilligoss:
Well listen I'll tell you I don't. You know, first of all I just finished reading one of Doug's blog Mr. Wilson's blogs and he said burn all the schools and I now like you you gotta find a way to say that. But I agree with him. So so that's it. We did that. And now we're getting ready to do Providence launch which is business focused.

How do we start Christian businesses? We actually just bought our first franchise at High Point. And we're going to use that as a way to fund other Kingdom initiatives. So we bought a home care franchise.

Marlin Detweiler:
Interesting.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's a first. I have never heard. I can't remember ever hearing of a church buying a franchise. Can you unpack that a bit? Yeah.

Jack Hilligoss:
Well we found out actually that it's much more common than you would think. We found about 50 churches that do it but most of them run their own publishing houses or their tech industries. But we did bump into a church up in Claremont that owned a Sky zone franchise believe it or not. And I went up to visit them and asked them how they structured that and what their purposes were.

I just got fascinated with the possibilities. So we spent almost a year researching franchises and finding one that aligned well with who we were and what we wanted to do and shared our values and pulled the trigger late this year to buy the franchise. And it's gone to our three stated goals are we actually want to create successful Christian business owners who are doing well and gaining affluence.

We want to create jobs for Christian people in our area that pay well. And the third thing is we want to create financial resources to fund the other missions of the church so that we're not constantly always just asking for donations but we're generating income. And then we're probably going to use those resources to microfinance the startup of small business entrepreneurs in the future.

So that's Providence. Launch. Providence voice is a web based kind of radio station that we're getting going this year. We're actually working with a gentleman named Adam Curry who actually helped Steve Jobs put together the iPod. And he got saved about three years ago on a sister church of ours in Texas. And he's designing this for churches now.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wow.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah. So that's coming out in February. So we'll have a kind of a web based Christian radio in this area. That's Providence voice. And then Providence let's see. Launch Academy voice. Oh. And now we're working with we're wanting to start a residency and internship leadership program and we're actually talking to Nick Ellis and Christian Hall's. Hopefully that'll be the platform that we'll use to get that going.

Marlin Detweiler:
That is unbelievable. I have known you to have a excuse me for borrowing the ad phrase but just do it mindset. Yeah. Tell me how that developed. How did you become like that? Because I believe there's a lot to be said that people can learn from them.

Jack Hilligoss:
Right. Well, you know the phrase the paralysis of analysis. Man, if you're. I found out early in my life that I could fall into that very quickly. I wanted everything to be mapped out on paper. And then I found out.

Marlin Detweiler:
I don’t believe you. I believe that's true about you.

Jack Hilligoss:
I was and I found that we never got anything done. Okay. The things that did happen.

Marlin Detweiler:

Are you able to flip the switch on it?

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah. Nothing ever happened the way that we planned it exactly anyways. And so at some point you just have to start. You know, I had a friend who used to say to me, the best way to begin is to commence. And so that's just been our philosophy. I know it's not about being reckless.

You do some research, you get as much information as you can, but at some point you just got to jump in and be willing to accept the fact that not everything is going to work. We've become comfortable with failure. If you don't fail, you won't succeed. And a lot of grace has been extended to me.

I think that having been at the same place for almost 30 years now, I've earned some leadership capital. So people are willing to let me fail sometimes and not get too worked up about it. But yeah, I've learned that you just have to jump in and you have to be also willing to hand your baby over to the barbarians.

You know, here's my idea here. Now take it and do what you will with it. And I find out that they make it better.

Marlin Detweiler:
I have never done I think we were up to over maybe around 200 episodes, and I've never done this in an episode before, but I want to ask the listener who has leadership opportunities to stop and rewind the last two minutes and listen to what you said again because that is so profound, okay? The idea of simply realizing you start maybe before you think you should because there's no time like the present.

I've been accused and I'm a pilot, so this makes me very nervous. But I've been accused of building the airplane while I'm trying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can assure you that's not a good idea as well. The pilot. I don't want to do that.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah, that's the phrase we use is building a bridge while you walk on it.

Marlin Detweiler:
So yeah, it is probably just as dangerous, actually. But the whole point is I loved what you said. Our plans will get modified anyway.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
So let's have enough information to know it's the right thing to do. Let's know what our first steps are and let's take those steps and then regroup under what we do next.

Jack Hilligoss:
Another thing that has helped me is with church people is just being willing to say on the front end, hey, let's try this. Let's just try it. Yeah. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And we'll say, let's give it a trial period. And that way if it doesn't work, you're kind of okay with that. So just gaining permission from people on the front end to try and fail is a big deal.

Marlin Detweiler:
So you've authored a couple books too, and I want to I didn't know that until I did research for this session. One of the books is called Untouchables honest conversations about subjects we would rather not discuss. And I would take that a little bit with a grain of salt. If I haven't heard. If I hadn't heard you preach before. But I know you. You live this. Talk to me about how the book came about.

Jack Hilligoss:
Well, I had always wanted to write a book.

Marlin Detweiler:
And it's ten years old, by the way. So this isn't a recent thing?

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah. No. It really just grew out of a sermon series that I preached at our church and I had been talking about writing a book forever. And again, finally someone said, well, write the book. What are you waiting on? And again, my problem is I wanted to write my magnum opus. You know, the big thing that well like Calvin's Institute. And that's not going to happen. I'm not wired that way. So finally, what I did.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's not likely to be the first thing you write, either.

Jack Hilligoss:
Oh no. And you know, you keep waiting for the big book deal. And I'm finding out those things don't happen very often, so I just okay, what's going to be the quickest way for me to get this done fairly effectively. And so I self-published it. I found a young man, Caleb Brakey was his name. And he basically takes the transcripts of a sermon and kind of puts it together for you.

And then. So when he did it, here's my problem. I didn't like the way he did it. So I went through and rewrote them all anyway. But he published them for me so that I actually done three books, and all of them have just been out of sermon series that I preached at the church.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, it is the subtopics. I don't think I said this here, but absolute truth. Heaven and hell, miracles, repentance, holiness, purity, generosity, race, gay marriage and politics. Yeah. Is there anything you'd add to that list today? Because that sounds pretty comprehensive to me.

Jack Hilligoss:
Well, probably immigration like you talk. There you go. And abortion. I should have spoken to that and didn't. And it's funny because when we published it, the feedback was one of the first pieces of feedback I got that I should have done one on abortion, and they were right, but it was published at that point.

Marlin Detweiler:
A pastor friend of mine who grew a church from 200 to 20,000, wow, said this. He said, if I don't get a certain amount, a certain percentage, he's even gotten to the point where he's got a measured amount. I don't know what it is, but if I don't get a certain amount of pushback and negative feedback, I must not be doing it right. How much negative feedback do you get?

Jack Hilligoss:
I think I get my fair share. It's not overwhelming. But it's enough. And I think he's probably right about that. One of the things I hope to do, and I think I'll get done this year, is start meeting on a regular basis with young men who feel a call to ministry.

And one of the things I want to say to them is you've got to have a thick skin and a tender heart, tough skin and a tender heart, and that's the hard balance to maintain in ministry. You just have to learn how to sift through criticism. Another saying I live by is, you don't count your critics, you weigh them. And most criticism you should just ignore, but there are some you should pay attention to.

Marlin Detweiler:
There are nuggets of truth. It needs to be heard. And what we get criticized for and take into consideration.

Jack Hilligoss:
Yeah, the hardest ones to take are the criticisms that come from people you don't like that you still need to listen to.

Marlin Detweiler:
I can understand that too, and I certainly agree. You also wrote a book. You said you wrote three books. I found two of them. The other one was, say what crazy things Jesus might say if we would listen. Yeah. Tell me the premise of the book.

Jack Hilligoss:
That was a series on the hard sayings or the mysterious sayings of Jesus, which is not an unusual series for a pastor to tackle. And gosh, it's been so long I can't even remember the chapter headings on that one anymore. And then that was it. It was all from the Gospels, different words that Jesus said that might catch people off guard.

And then this last one I wrote was just this last year, and that was off of the Theophany or Kristoff and these that are in the Old Testament. So bumping into God, where Jesus shows up where we least expect him.

Marlin Detweiler:
So yeah, that's really neat. Well, I have one last question for you. You did not mention the idea of starting a seminary. And I want you to know that I don't think the fact that you don't have a degree should stop you from doing that.

Jack Hilligoss:
Well, I appreciate that. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
So when are you going to start one?

Jack Hilligoss:
Well, you know, I read my emails. I just sent an email to our executive this morning, and I have.

Marlin Detweiler:
Not read your emails except for the ones you said to me.

Jack Hilligoss:
I just sent an email to our executive this morning that we're putting a goal out for the fall of 2026, and I'm going to get my degree just because I want to, just because I would enjoy doing it. And if you're going to be in the ministry, you have to be learning all the time.

And I would enjoy doing it. But what I'm hoping to do is kind of a residency. Kind of seminary. You introduced me to the gentleman that started Redemption Seminary. So I've been interacting with him. Oh, good. And I think we're going to be able to put something together. The president of Warner's talking with me. So I think we'll be able to pull something together in 2026.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's awesome. Well, it is so fun to have a kindred spirit nearby. I look forward to getting to know you better. It's exciting to see what you're doing.

Jack Hilligoss:
Okay. Well, I appreciate it, Marlin. I appreciate you inviting me on.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Thank you very much. And folks, thank you for joining us on this episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian Education. We hope to see you next time.