Morrison Heights Baptist Church to recognize service of Dr. Greg Belser

By Danny C. Davis

Morrison Heights Baptist Church
Celebrates 20 years in ministry with Pastor Greg Belser and his wife, Susan
Reception: Friday, March 28, 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. at the church.
Breakfast Fellowship: Sunday, March 30, 8:30-9:30 a.m. in the Morrison Heights Commons
Worship Celebration: Sunday, March 30, 10:30 a.m.
3000 Hampstead Boulevard
601-924-5620

Morrison Heights Baptist Church (MHBC) was founded as a new mission outreach of the then Clinton Baptist Church in 1958 on Morrison Drive.

The church has had only seven pastors in the its forty-eight-year history. Senior Pastor Dr. Greg Belser has reached a milestone this month for serving the 2,100-member congregation for twenty years, after answering the call in 2005.  The longest previous pastor’s tenure was Brother Charles Gentry, who served the Clinton church from 1964 to 1977.

An open reception for Dr. Belser is planned for Friday, March 28 from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. at the church.  On Sunday, March 30, a breakfast fellowship will be held in the Morrison Heights Commons from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., with the Worship Celebration at 10:30 a.m.

Belser, 67, was born in the Dallas, Texas, area and lived in the Mesquite, Texas, area before moving with his family to the Corpus Christi, Texas, area at an early age.

Belser has been married to his wife Susan for 45 years. They have three daughters – Lindsay, Ashley, and Bethany, and nine grandchildren. Belser attended college in the Corpus Christi, Texas, area, followed by receiving his Masters and Doctor of Divinity degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Dallas.

Belser has spent forty-seven years in the ministry. His last previous ministry was at Morningview Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, for fifteen years, before coming to Morrison Heights.

Shortly after the resignation of Dr. Hal Kitchens in June 2002, a pastor search committee was elected by the church. The committee consisted of Phillip Gunn, chairman; Tim Rowan, vice chairman; Vickie Mascagni; Danny and Debbie Ivey; Lonnie Rushing and Sue Sims.

The search for a new pastor would turn out to be a long, drawn-out process before selecting Dr. Greg Belser.

“We had around one hundred eighty resumes for our senior pastor’s position to go through, and we had exhausted all the candidates that we went through and continued to pray and study the Bible for God’s direction for our committee,” said Rowan.

By now, over two years had passed without the committee as a whole feeling led to a prospective pastor.

By late summer of 2004, each search committee member was given a different state to research for a possible pastor and to search the internet for sermons to listen to.

“I was given the state of Alabama,” said Rowen. “In that time period, there were not a lot of services on line to listen to. But one day, I found a service sermon from the pastor at Morningview Baptist Church in Montgomery.”

Rowen was impressed with the pastor’s sermon at Morningview Baptist, Greg Belser.

“I sent a link of Dr. Greg’s sermon to our chairman, Phillip Gunn,” said Rowen. “Once Phillip listened to the sermon, the whole committee listened, and we were all in agreement that we needed to make a trip to Montgomery and meet with Dr. Greg Belser.”

“We first met with Dr. Belser in December 2004, and we all felt led to go back two more times in January 2005,” said Rowen.

“When I first met with the search committee, we were in a Life Action revival, and I did not want to cause any interruption with that; and we were not unhappy with where we were serving,” said Belser.

“But after my wife Susan and I prayerfully considered Morrison Heights, we felt it was where God wanted us to serve. There were two big things that were positives for Morrison Heights.  First, was the proximity to a great Baptist college, Mississippi College, and also, the church had already begun plans to relocate the campus to a larger area on the I- 20 corridor.”

“We felt like it was a good opportunity for us, and the Lord did not close any doors.”

But the move was not easy for the Belser family.

“Our older two daughters, Lindsay and Ashley, had both grown up in Montgomery and at Morningview Baptist, and had moved on to Birmingham to Samford University to college. But our youngest daughter was about to be a senior in high school, and we felt she and Susan should stay for her senior year of high school. Also, Morningview was a lot like Morrison Heights, with a very loving and caring congregation and high-quality people who like to serve.”

So, for a little over a year, Belser had the long commute of the 250-mile trip from Montgomery to Clinton. He left every Thursday for Clinton, and drove back to Montgomery every Monday morning.

But the biggest obstacle was about to come for the Belser family.  Shortly after Greg accepted the pastorate at MHBC in Clinton, Susan was diagnosed with cancer and went through nine months of treatment.

“It was a tough for us that year, but Susan is very strong person; and she is the one who made the arrangement work. She stayed behind while having to go through a long nine months of treatments.”

Within a year, Susan was cancer-free, and in July 2006, she joined Greg in Clinton.

One of the things that Belser says he is most proud of is Morrison Heights’ move to the new campus on the I-20 North frontage road at 3000 Hampstead Boulevard. With seventy-five acres, the site provided plenty of space for future growth and development.

“It was just a God thing for our church,” said Belser. “The property originally was not for sale by the owner. But, over time and after a lot of prayer by our relocation committees, the owner eventually changed his mind and offered it to us to purchase. But there were still a lot of obstacles before we could start to build. We did not have a road or any utilities to the site. The only access was a narrow back road from Mt. Salus Drive.”

Construction began in spring of 2005, and the first service at the new church was held in March of 2007.  A new access road was built from the Home Depot on Hampstead Boulevard that extended to the new church site and extended all the way to the Clinton Wal-Mart at U.S. Highway 80.

“We had to change contractors and financing during the two-year construction period, but God was in it, and it all worked out.”

For the first year of meeting at the new church site, the youth and college classes had to continue to meet at the old Morrison Heights’ location and bus to Hampstead Campus for the worship service.

“We did not have the money to build facilities for our youth and college, but we pledged $8 million dollars in our building campaign and had a new college and youth facility built within a year – and had it totally paid for.”

Today, all of the buildings on the 75-acre campus are totally debt free.

One of the other things that Belser says he is very proud of is the worldwide mission outreach by Morrison Heights.

The church currently sponsors forty-two missionaries worldwide and is about to add four more.

“Mississippi College is a significant provider for Southern Baptist Missionaries that serve around the world. And a lot of those people come back to Clinton and retire and serve our church.”

“We also have mission support teams that go out around the world to support our missionaries at different times during the calendar year.”

Another thing that MHBC has added over the years is local work projects carried out by the congregation, providing fix-up jobs for older members and for needy schools in the Jackson metro area. Many volunteer teams go out each Sunday afternoon in the month of July to help give back to the people of Clinton and surrounding areas.

 “I am also very proud of our ministry of our Elders and Deacons,” said Belser.

“We would not be the great church we are without strong leadership from our Elders and Deacons.”

“We have a very loving fellowship that loves each other,” said Belser. “We are like a big church with a lot of customer service to serve others.”

“Our vision is to continue to reach out to our community. We want to be a church that is welcoming and hospitable to our community. We want to be a church that teaches and preaches the Bible as the rule of faith and practice for our community,” Belser continued.

“We want to see revival in our community. I meet with other pastors in our community every week, and we pray for revival in our city,” he said. “We need to serve our community year-round.”

Belser was also quick to point out that, “this celebration is not to be just about my service, but Susan deserves just as much credit for what we have been able to accomplish in Clinton.”

Former Elder and current Deacon Chairman Tommy Ash summarized what Greg and Susan Belser have meant to the church over the past twenty years.

“Many good leaders have an ego to match, but I have never seen that in Dr. Greg Belser,” said Ash.  “He is such a humble, genuinely loving person who truly understands what it means to be a Christian. He is very intentional in what he does and how he does it, and he’s usually the smartest guy in the room. His greatest weakness is probably his love of messing with people (which comes from an effort to love them and show them attention), but which leads him to sometimes put his foot in his mouth.”

“I’ve never known anybody like him, and this current success and prosperity of our church is due to his leadership. It starts at the top,” said Ash. “I fear we’ll never be able to truly replace him.”