MID WEEK MOTIVATION - September 9, 2026 "Twenty Years Of Faithful Growth" (Paul Wardlaw)

You're listening to the Midweek Motivation Podcast from DeSoto Hills Baptist Church in South Haven, Mississippi.

Here's your hosts, Mark Lewis, David Burgess, Laura Ulrich, Hunter Smith, and Pastor Grant Spiegel.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for Wednesday, September the 9th, 2026.

Today's podcast is a little different from our normal format.

Next month, DeSoto Hills will celebrate its 20th anniversary.

And as we approach that milestone, I decided to sit down with several people who played an influential role in the move and in helping shape the church as we know it today.

We are here today with Tell them Who You Are Paul Wardlaw.

Paul Wardlaw, one of our founding members of DeSoto Hills, and we wanted to talk about our 20-year anniversary, which is coming up.

The official date we did find out today was October the 15th.

So on the 15th of October, that would be 20 years.

We are going to celebrate 20 years on Sunday, October the 11th.

And we've got lots of special stuff coming up for that celebration.

But I wanted to talk with Mr.

Wardlaw today because you were one of the founding members of DeSota Hills.

And I wanted to go back way, way back because you were also a member of Carriage Hills for many, many years.

So tell us a little bit about the origin story of how you and your wife ended up at Carriage Hills.

Well, we uh moved into South Haven in the early 70s and joined uh Carriage Hills uh shortly after moving in and getting settled in.

Uh it was Carriage Hills was somewhat of a a community church or a subdivision church, but uh it it was also a very uh a very growing church, active church.

But uh we enjoy we raise our children there, and uh uh the the journey to get well and uh uh DeSota Hills is a very remarkable story, very remarkable because of the vision that our uh then pastor, I think Brother Steve Howell and Deacons uh had a vision of another church east as the South Haven area started growing east and and south, of uh purchasing land way before they even thought of a another church, whether it be moving a church, uh moving, relocating Carriage Hills.

But uh as we all know, that that all come into a greater, greater perspective.

Right.

And you said y'all became members of Carriage Hills in the 70s?

In the 70s, uh-huh.

Okay.

And this land, do you remember when exactly Carriage Hills purchased it?

Like was that in the early 90s or the late 90s?

Probably in the mid to late nineties.

Uh uh, it was fifteen acres out here that our our then our staff leadership uh had the wisdom to go ahead and purchase the land.

Uh again, I don't think at that time there was any uh plans made to relocate.

Uh it just we thought at some point with the growth in the area there would be a need for an additional church out here or a church out here.

So with that thought, uh and I can't speak to actual because I was not part of that decision, but uh ev it was a wise decision, as we can attest.

I remember when we moved here in the late 90s, obviously y'all already had the land.

That would have been 97, 98.

So the land was purchased before then.

I don't know how many years before then it was, but I can tell people, listeners, if you're envisioning that this area was already bustling, it was not.

Even in '98, my best of my recollection, uh Church Road was still two-lane at the time.

Get well was barely a road at all, and there was just a four-way stop sign right here at this intersection.

It was there was not there was nothing out here except Pinehurst neighborhood, which is where my parents bought, which is why I was even over here.

Well, when uh Goodman Road uh became a state highway, of course, that opened up all the area uh east of of the mid mid-South Haven to future growth.

And uh uh and it didn't take long for it to really start to develop.

And uh of course it was only after uh Brother James became our pastor that ideas really started to float around about either uh relocating carriage hills, or as we can always talk about the multiplication of churches.

And of course, that came much later, but uh still the wisdom to buy 15 acres out here in a cotton field was was beyond unthinkable.

That's right.

Unthinkable.

And I'm sure we thought we paid way too much.

And boy, you look at it and I I don't know what it's worth right now, but insanely good investment.

A very good investment on the church's part for sure.

We we we during our construction we did have a a company w wanting to buy part of our corner out there, right uh, which is well parking lot, but uh but we firmly said no.

We're happy like we are.

Right.

But you're right.

Uh there's really couldn't put a value on it now.

How far into the future did everyone think at the time the move might be?

Or do you want to go right back to what you said earlier?

Y'all really didn't have any idea about how that was gonna work.

Right.

I I don't think uh at that time there was any timeline or a uh really much discussion to to my knowledge about when we might make the move.

Uh I I I do remember uh and I'll refer to one of the quotes I hear Brother Jabe say so often for such a time as this.

For such a time as this, when he came, I think the pastor search committee brought him out here and showed him our fifteen acres with the idea that that there potentially might be a move or a another church planted out here.

Right.

And that began the wheels began turning then.

So uh that was probably maybe, and I'm I'm guessing maybe three years prior before we actually got geared up to make a move.

Right.

But uh uh it it it took a while.

Right.

And then you have to secure all of the money and all that, which is I know another whole conversation.

At what point did um y'all start to say this might be actually time to do this?

And I was in college at the time, so I'm real hazy on all of that stuff.

I don't remember much of that at all.

Well the to my recollection, there there was some talk about it, and then it became a reality as uh the decision was made to move the church.

And uh uh again that that went w there was a vote.

Uh I think we had an excess of about three hundred people deciding to make the move, and probably around a hundred or so that included my mom, which lived in the Carriage Hill subdivision, that was preferred to stay there.

Right.

So so the again I attribute Brother James to coming up with a motto of one church today, two churches tomorrow, one family forever.

And that and and and the thought was uh the congregation as a whole was going to help us make a move, right, and then we would support each other during the move, after the move, until we b all got kind of resettled.

Right.

And that went uh very, very smooth.

Uh that there's you know, I had a number of people question me and say, Well, y'all split from Carriage Hills, or y'all and was we were always, all of us, quick to say, no, we multiplied from Carriage Hills.

I heard multiple people say that too.

Like that that sort of took off like wildfire because I think most people, including people at Carriage Hills, did not want the community to think that it was really an ugly process, because quite frankly, it was not.

No.

It was about as an amazing of a multiplication as you could as you could pull off uh for a Baptist church.

I do remember at one point, Paul, that there was talk of maybe even doing a smaller building on this property, and dad would preach at one location and preach at another location.

So I remember y'all were having conversations of several iterations of how it would the building might work.

That's right.

Because you were instrumental at the time in in telling us or getting helping with what was going to be affordable and what was not going to be affordable.

It's always a process, Mark, when you uh when you talk about uh a a new church building.

Uh one one of the things I I like to point out too, Carriage Hills being a subdivision or community church of a sort was landlocked.

You know, we we were growing.

Uh uh Carriage Hills were were busting at the seams.

So we felt like this was a good time.

Uh but then the the mathematics evolves and then how much space do we need?

And that uh there were meetings after meetings after meetings.

We did have a couple of aces up our sleeve, if I can use that because AERC or Doug Thornton was our architect of record, uh uh and uh who was on who was a member.

Who was a member, right?

And certainly had the credentials because he was a lead architect at the Nell Lender Lander Center.

Right.

So we had that.

Uh we uh uh began doing uh meetings, doing uh schematic drawings, uh needs for youth, reads for choir, needs for for fellowship, that type of thing.

So it took several months uh to really formulate b minimum square footages that we thought we needed.

Uh because the truth is the week we moved in this building it was too small.

That's true.

But we anticipated that was going to be the case.

But the truth is for anyone, and I remember people in meetings back then saying it out in out loud in the in the meetings in the auditorium, why don't we build it bigger?

And I still remember to this day you coming up to the mic and saying, I we can't afford any more than what we've got.

Like we're trying our hardest to build what we're building out there.

And there were some some concessions made.

There were some areas that we really felt like we would need more space, but we just simply did not have the means.

Right.

Uh and and and banks will only, you know, would allow us X amount of dollars, and we had to get the most out of that.

So A church is not a business.

No.

And so for a bank, it could be a risk.

Very much so.

Very much so.

And so they're only going to lend you so much money.

What were some of the concessions that you remember?

I feel like if I remember correctly, preschool was worried about the size of that.

It was small.

Right.

And and and the uh demographics of the families out here, we needed more space in preschool.

We needed more nursery space.

Uh uh we we utilized the attic, which was not at the time, not it was an attic.

So it really turned out into a really nice area.

If I remember now, I'm and again, I'm grasping at some straws because this has been a long time, and you may not remember some of these details either.

I remember seeing a first set of drawings where the youth were just on a portion of this second floor that there was no third floor.

It's right.

I feel like y'all added a third floor because you were like, there is not space for what the youth are going to need.

I could I can can't tell you how often we went back to the drawing board and and and of course our multi-purpose area, uh we had the design idea of a worshipful multi-purpose area.

We had a it had an orchestra pit sunk down in it.

At one time, you know.

Well that goes that's another great point.

We met with each department head, and each department head, of course, has their own wish lists.

Yeah.

And not everybody gets what you want.

But uh uh yeah, you're right.

We we would have loved to have a nice orchestra pit, but then we kept thinking of the basketballs that would end up in that orchestra pit.

Right.

And and uh to my knowledge, I don't think there's ever been a basketball dribble out there other than, you know.

No, and truthfully, for the amount of equipment we have in there, you'd have to have one of those uh I've seen churches with the pull nets.

They literally have to pull a net in front of it, and you don't want the look of that, and you probably don't want the trouble of doing that every every week either.

So uh and then the logistics of putting goals out and chairs up.

Oh, that's a lot of work.

It's a lot of work.

So so that being said, we probably could have done without a few uh items that we built in for recreation at the time, but that was the direction we were headed, and uh of course we we we we changed directions quite often.

I I remember at least two or three different sets of plans.

Do you remember about how many iterations it took?

Wow.

Um guesstimate, I mean I I would probably say ten, twelve different uh uh space allotments uh and uh you know yeah, for Doug.

That joker is like, how many times am I gonna draw this church?

Needless to say, he's not a member anymore.

Right.

But that was that that's a great thing.

He's going on to to they moved to Hernando and he is a member of Hernando Church.

Well, I I love it.

Okay.

What are some of the um what are some of the highlight moments you remember about the transition move?

Well, let's let's first of all step into the moment when y'all had the final plans and you got word that we could get the dollar amount that was needed to do this and it was an actual let's sign on the dotted line and go.

When was that?

What was that moment?

Um I was, of course, chairman of the construction team.

We had other teams in place at the time.

There was more of a an administrative team.

There was a team that uh uh that took care of the details of uh uh church business per se.

So so my focus was strictly in the construction area, which involved many trips to banks, spreading out our plans, trying to do a sales pitch on w what we'd like to do here.

So that was probably one of the highlights of it.

We we heard no, not for more than one bank.

But then we did uh have a bank and we had a great track record, great credit, uh uh and the numbers that were gonna move out here.

We already knew somewhere in a ballpark of the number of families or people that were gonna come out here.

So, so and then we had a um uh a program, uh I forget what it was called, but w where we pledged a certain amount toward the new building.

And and we had the corporation of everybody at Carriage Hills that were gonna stay at Carriage Hills.

Right.

So so that that really was very it really touched me to see the corporation of everybody had and that we were all going to be a part of this move.

When Carriage Hills bought this property, did y'all take out loans for that or did y'all just buy it outright?

I I I wasn't part of that, Mark, so I can't speak of that per se, but I would guess that we took out loans, but I I do not know.

But it would have been paid off by the time.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it it was paid off by the time.

So my next question is most banks should have been okay with it just because of this area was already starting to become trendy, and this property was worth a lot of money.

So Yeah.

Not so at the time uh like we talked about earlier, the the the growth had was down the Goodman Corridor, but it hadn't grown south as much as we are.

So we were still in an area of agricultural, you know.

Right.

But the subdivisions that we see now were not here.

Uh we we were not a standalone but yet yet it wasn't residentially developed anything like it is now.

So so there was a certain degree of risk, I guess, for banks.

And then uh uh you know, God has a way of working things out to where we did find a a great partner in a banking institution.

And uh uh it it just unfolded and and we there was not we didn't go back for any more money.

We were able to do it w within budget.

And by the way, I don't even know, I'm not gonna say on the podcast what we paid, but it you looking back at it today, I don't know how we got this much building.

And I feel like I feel like when y'all came through with inspectors at the end, they didn't understand how we built this much facility for what we took out.

No.

We did we we did uh uh we focused mostly on the infrastructure.

We we we we if we saved money, it was in detail as far as uh uh flooring and if you remember we had concrete floors.

The attic was unfinished.

Yeah, unfinished.

If if no most people look back at uh and I have a few pictures that I'll put on our website so y'all can look if you're listening, but imagine uh the concrete was not polished up there, it was not finished at all.

It was gray concrete, it looked like a patio on your garage.

Straight off there was no baseboards, there was no paint.

We came up there and we did We painted.

We did all of that.

We put the we had our own electricians come in and and do the electrical and everything.

So it was literally we saved a lot of money on that because people come into the our attic venue now and they're blown away.

Our attic venue is very, very nice venue for a church.

And so um so I I certainly see where we cut corners and save money.

We didn't have a kitchen at the time.

We had the infrastructure plumbed in for it.

We were plumbed in.

We we we had what we exercised as value engineering, which making it cheaper.

Right.

But we value engineered quite a bit, and and we would get a bid, and if if we could we could pull something out of that bid to bring a price down, that that exercise went on with our construction team, with the staff, and uh uh went on a number of times.

All right.

The multiplication moment.

I send I I remember that we did have uh business meeting and and we voted with a majority to move, like you said earlier.

There were people who were not wanting to do that.

And then at some point, I believe it was my dad, brother James, who just said, let's uh back off of that completely and if they want to stay, they want to stay.

What do you remember about some of those moments?

Because everybody seems to fondly remember that decision just being made and let's do it.

Yeah, yeah.

Um it was uh I I remember the sermon, I remember uh it was like and we we are going to move.

And and just like the the tribes of Israel, there's some that wanted to stay.

But they also helped them take the promised land.

And that and that was kind of the the subject of of of the the or the format of our move.

We're all gonna go.

We you're gonna help us.

Now we promise to help you.

You can stay if you'd like.

But uh uh our our decision to move forward is our decision to move forward.

And it went very gracefully.

Uh uh I I can remember our our grand opening or our grand our first service here.

We probably uh So was that on the fifteenth?

Uh I think so.

I uh uh if my memory is right, I think it was r right at the fifteenth or maybe the Sunday after uh uh but uh we had as many Carriage Hills folks here.

I'm not even sure they had service at Carriage Hills that day because we all gathered here.

We we had a very interesting uh groundbreaking.

Uh we didn't have the traditional shovels and groundbreaking.

We had a breaking plow.

Uh and I remember it.

Yeah, and and and the congregation, both Carriage Hills and the Soda Hills were had a big cord hooked up to it, a rope hooked.

Yeah.

Brother James, that's a helm, and we broke ground that way.

And uh that I remember that, uh the the fun part of that.

But uh that pretty much started our construction right there.

I remember touring the building, it was you had an open house of some sort, and it was before the first Sunday.

Was that the Saturday right before, or was it a week before or something?

Do you remember that day when we were all in the building?

Uh and we all wrote Bible verses on the it was probably the week before, maybe two weeks before, because we had not carpeted the the pulpit, the stage.

So so uh that that was probably a week or two weeks prior.

And I remember going around, I do I still remember, you're gonna laugh, you may not remember this at all.

Me and my wife got stuck on the elevator.

Oh yes, I do remember that.

I do, I do, and it has the most annoying alarm system on the hell.

If you've ever been stuck on the elevator here, it I mean, it is so loud.

That thing is so loud.

And I still remember you knocking on the elevator door and yelling at us.

No, and you were like, I'm gonna reset it.

And you came up here and you broke that breaker.

Turn that breaker off and the whole light, the whole everything went off and then it came back on.

Right.

Yeah.

That's that that was a pretty shopping moment right there.

Yeah.

Were you were you married at that time?

We were.

Okay.

We were.

And I have a picture.

Look, we were laughing.

Um I mean, after the excitement wore off saying, Mark probably did that on purpose.

I have a picture.

Uh I saw it the other day because I've got I've I've gone back through all of my stuff to find all the pictures for all of our videos and stuff that we've been working on.

And uh my wife is sitting in the floor of the elevator with her fingers in her ears.

So I know that's what it's from.

It's because we were sitting there and that alarm was going off.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do remember that.

All right.

Tell me about the first Sunday.

It was very, very exciting.

Tell all of our listeners because everybody was just filled with joy and pride when we got to finally meet here on that first Sunday.

Well, we we were packed.

Oh that it was we need us to say that they were there were uh visitors, there were celebrities, there were uh politicians, there were Southern Baptists coming from Jackson.

Right.

Uh we all had just a little little part of of of our uh what we did, and uh uh it it was a great day.

Brother I I I think Brother James, I I can't remember he might have had a sermonet and then maybe somebody from Jackson or Southern Baptist had a little sermonet to go with that, but uh it it was a great day.

All right.

What was the most stressful meeting you ever remember?

Do you remember one?

Yes, I remember uh I I was not a deacon.

Okay.

So so I reported to the deacons pretty regularly, uh being from a construction standpoint as far as our pay apps and how far we were along in construction.

But I do remember uh uh one pretty stressful meeting when it came down to uh who gets what as far as uh musical instruments, uh tables, chairs, all the little things that goes with that.

I've heard multiple people tell this story, too.

Right.

So so uh I was asked to leave the meeting, which was fine.

I was glad to back out of that.

Right.

Uh because I was not a deacon, so that was for them to hash out somewhat.

But uh uh the result of that was let's take the high road.

I don't remember I don't remember us coming over here with hardly anything.

No, we didn't.

No.

No, it it was the drums.

We were allowed to keep the drums.

I wonder why.

But uh but uh we we we you know again, God bless us.

Uh we we we we came over here with with bare minimum, but we came over here with a fullness of of spirit and and and excitement, and uh that was probably one of the most stressful meetings because I I tried to be prepared with numbers because that's always uh critical.

And I did have uh some super support from many of the deacons.

And then I had and I won't don't mean this in a negative way, but I had a lot of questions from some of the deacons.

And I tried my best to answer, but uh uh so much of the answers were uh were uh on averages or or I didn't, you know, there's no way to put an exact number on how many chairs we need, nor the cost of the chairs, uh the the pulpit uh musical instruments.

You know, I just wasn't that savvy and knowing all those those numbers when they needed those numbers.

But uh uh again, Brother Mark and Brother James, we all work through that, and I I think uh God was glorified in everything that we've done as far as furnishing our church.

Absolutely.

And and again, it uh just look at the evidence of how both of these churches have turned out, and uh you can see that everywhere.

All right.

Twenty years later, when you drive on this property, what do you see?

You know uh I forget a lot after 20 years, but I still remember some of the earliest days of this church when I drive on the campus.

I see uh uh see I see God's hand in it in in so many ways.

What what people don't know uh perhaps is that uh you know I had very limited construction knowledge.

I had built a few retail centers uh houses.

But as far as anything on this scope, no, no.

This was this was a new territory for me.

Uh but uh as God would have it, uh shortly as we began uh phasing this down and getting out of this out of this project, Doug Thornton called and wanted me to go to work for him.

I had just closed out uh a career in the dry goods business.

And so uh after this, I spent fifteen years with AERC as a construction administrator for a number of churches, number of office buildings.

So so uh God worked in fun ways, doesn't he?

That's right.

So so in that I I I I'm always every time I pass this church or I go to Corinth and see a church that we worked on or another town or I I just think uh I'm I'm blessed how God has has allowed me to be a part of the growth of his kingdom.

Yeah.

And uh it's it's uh it's beyond what I would ever dream of.

Yes.

Is there anything else you'd like to say before we leave?

Well, I I want to tell you a couple of uh amusing things uh that that happened during our construction.

I'd love to hear that.

We had uh when we were roughing in the interiors, we had someone, and we blamed it on kids, came in and uh somehow got a forklift cranked.

No way.

And they took out the walls on the uh in the ground hall and then buried the the forklift in a lake right down where now there's a subdivision.

So we we had that.

Uh uh another instance, we had a in all of our uh electrical uh termination was in the uh in the kitchen.

We had someone break in one night and uh and clip all of the wires as an electrician hangs it down before they actually put it into the circuits.

It was we had multiple wires hanging, came in and clipped all the wires, even with the ceiling.

But the m amaz the music the interesting part was that he drug a whole uh roll of wire over to stand on while he was cutting up.

When he could have just loaded the roll of wire.

We could have rolled the yeah.

But yeah, a few little things like that happened.

And uh uh it was that's just part of construction, you know.

You have to deal with it.

But that's uh it's it's it was a great project.

All right.

Well, thank you so very much.

Thank you for talking talking with us today.

And uh man, we're so blessed here at DeSota Hills, and this has been a very different kind of podcast episode, and we've got several more coming with some other people who were a part of the move back 20 years ago.

But um we thank Mr.

Paul again for sitting in with us today.

If you don't have a church home, we'd love to see you here on Sunday mornings.

You can catch our services online at DeSotaHills.com, our YouTube channel at DeSota Hills Baptist Church for all our church family.

We love you.

We'll see you back here next Wednesday morning, bright and early.

God bless.

This has been your midweek motivation.

We'd love to have you join us in person on Sunday mornings.

Our services are at 9 and 10 30 a.m.