Into all the world
11-01-2023
When Rev. Dr. Georgia Hill shares her faith, she increases her own. Mission trips to various parts of the world have offered her opportunities to broaden perspective and learn what faith really is.
It’s hard to forget the first time you see God working in the lives of people in some of the direst situations. For Rev. Dr. Georgia Hill, it was during a mission trip with a small Pentecostal church to Tanzania.
“One woman had been in a war,” Rev. Dr. Hill begins, “People came in shooting, she told us, and she pretended to be dead. Another woman had been pregnant and yet had an expectation that God was going to do something good for her and child in that situation. “It’s hard to forget such strong faith…to see that despite the situation, people continue to lift up the name of Jesus…to always find something to be thankful for. I’ve learned what faith really is.”
Rev. Dr. Hill, M.Div.’98, D.Min.’08, founded Detroit’s LifeChurch Riverside in 2020, and was an attorney before she started to minister to churches and communities on a global scale. “It’s really not that far a leap when you think of lawyers as advocates,” she explains. “Ministry is the same thing. When someone comes to me, I’m advocating for them through ministry and prayer.”
Ministry takes many forms on mission trips, notes Rev. Dr. Hill, who has traveled to South Africa, Panama, Israel, and Liberia with various church organizations. There she gets involved with local leaders to participate in church services, baptisms, and public professions of faith. She also helps with supplying computers and tablets for pastors, financial support for students’ tuition, uniforms, and school supplies, and sharing healthcare information. “People are looking for someone to make the word of God real,” she says.
Being real, for her, starts with seeing people’s needs as holy and doing what is necessary for health and wholeness. Such holy work has included bringing books and eyeglasses, and at other times, funds to start a pig farm, build a more centrally located well or purchase a motorbike to help local ministry leaders reach places that can’t be easily accessed by car.
Rev. Dr. Hill credits her education at McCormick for the tools needed to effectively do such ministry. “I had visited other seminaries, but when I got to McCormick it was during the weekly community worship,” Rev. Dr. Hill remembers. “I walked in there and I just felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. It seemed like a place for me.” Through creative worship experiences, collaborative coursework, and exposure to diverse people, places, and perspectives at McCormick, Rev. Dr. Hill found common ground, an understanding of common humanity, that prepared her for a more global ministry.
“We all want to see the same thing–the Living God; God in the flesh,” she says. “When people are in desperate conditions, they don’t have time for trivial stuff. They need real help. And if there ever was a time to see love put in action in our world, the time is now.”
Rev. Dr. Georgia Hill
Alumni 1998 & 2008