Thank you for visiting HPClife.com. Highland Park Church is a church that strives to meet you right where you are. Whether you are just curious about church and God or you are a committed follower of Christ, you are welcome here. Christ reached out to people of all ages and backgrounds and at Highland Park Church we desire to do the same. We are a body of believers committed to CONNNECTING with God; CONNECTING people; and CONNECTING the world to Christ. This is the purpose behind everything we do.

What denomination are you?
Officially, Highland Park Church is Highland Park Baptist Church. We are associated with the Southern Baptist Convention through our giving to the cooperative program and our participation in missions through the International Missions Board and the North American Missions Board. Like all Southern Baptist Churches, we are not under the control of any outside board or organization. But we recognize that we can accomplish more cooperatively than we ever could as individual churches especially in the area of missions. Highland Park is proud of our long heritage and association with Southern Baptist.

Around 2008 we started identifying ourselves as Highland Park Church verses Highland Park Baptist Church. There were several reasons for this shift.

1.  It is just shorter and easier to say. As a matter of fact most of our people refer to us as HP. Once someone new sent an email asking if HP stood for “His People” or “His Purpose”. We explained that it stood for Highland Park (which is the name associated with the area of town where our current building is located).
2.  Our guest repeatedly told us that our worship style was not what they expected due to their experience with other “Baptist” churches. We found that for one reason or another; many of the people we were trying to reach had negative reactions to the word Baptist. Others had certain expectations of our church simply because we were a Southern Baptist Church. In an effort to eliminate every barrier keeping us from reaching unchurched people; we simple began referring to ourselves as Highland Park Church in the community.
3. In recent years there have been several divisive issues among Southern Baptist and some controversial resolutions made at the national convention that were broadcast in the national media. In many of these cases, we may have agreed with the statements but not the way they were communicated or the level of focus the Southern Baptist Convention was dedicating to them. As a church, our mission is to connect with people who do not have a relationship with Jesus and earn the right to introduce them to Him. It seemed counter productive to constantly explain why other Baptist were publicly boycotting or lobbying against so many things. Many of our people stopped using the word Baptist to distance us from these unimportant arguments so that we could focus on the important work of reaching people.

We are not ashamed or embarrassed to be associated with Southern Baptist. On the contrary, we are proud of the Southern Baptist commitment to reach the world for Christ. (It connects with our own mission!) The doctrine we believe and teach is still the same as what other Southern Baptist Churches around the world would say they agree with and teach themselves. All of our official legal documents and the front of our building still read Highland Park Baptist Church. We just tend to operate day to day with the name HP or Highland Park Church for the reasons listed above. But our association with Southern Baptist and their efforts to reach the world with the message of Christ is NOT a secret nor do we want it to be.