When Ron and Hope Carpenter decided to step away from their South Carolina campus and move their ministry to California, they said it was the toughest decision of their lives.
“This is all we’ve known,” Ron says in a new sit-down interview. “So it’s a huge step of faith.”
The couple will become senior pastors of Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose as Dick Bernal retires in 2018.
“I said, ‘We’re not going to California, we’re South Carolinians,'” Hope said of her first reaction. “But, I just began to think, you know—wow, what could we take to Northern California? We could take Jesus, we could take the good news of the gospel.”
Click here to watch the rest of their interview with Fox Carolina.
The Carpenters made the announcement Sunday.
“Would our life and our skills and our talent and our energy, if it was set in another place, would it yield something greater for the kingdom?” Carpenter says in a video message. “… It was about that same time that we began to ask ourselves these questions that an opportunity by a wonderful man, 73 years old, who has a church in Northern California began to say, ‘I really want you to pray about being my successor at this church.’ And he began to tell me about how Northern California had never been unlocked.”
The California church is quite excited for their new leadership.
“We had an epic day at Jubilee! We were treated with some early Christmas music as well as a performance by the Jubilee Kids Choir! After delivering a timely message about change and growth, Pastor Dick made his official announcement about his retirement and most importantly who will be replacing him! Welcome to Jubilee Ron and Hope Carpenter! We can hardly wait to see you on January 21st! #change,” according to a Facebook post.
Pastor John Gray of Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston will take over the Carpenter’s Greenville congregation under a new name.
Satellite Redemption campuses in Florence and Asheville will be closing in the near future and a satellite campus in Charlotte will continue but will be separate from the Redemption group, which had seven locations, including a branch in Puerto Rico as well as an online campus, according to the Greenville News.
“You can always tell how much you love someone by whose hands you leave them in,” Carpenter says in a video message.
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