God Is Moving at Woodside

In 1955, Pastor Harold Moran founded Big Beaver Baptist Church in what is now Troy, Michigan. The church met in homes, a bicycle shop, and the local city hall before settling at a building of its own on Rochester Road.

Today, Woodside Bible Church spans across many communities in southeast Michigan. Much has changed, but our heart to help people see Jesus remains the same. Read on for a snapshot of what God’s doing at Woodside today:

He’s Cultivating Discipleship

• 355 Life Groups are currently active at Woodside

• 4,982 Woodsiders participate in Life Groups

• 82 Life Groups were launched in Woodside’s 2024/25 ministry year

He’s Changing Hearts

Growing up, Kenzie’s family never went to church or talked about God. A friend invited her to a service in 2018, and she went mostly to socialize. She attended inconsistently, experienced church hurt, and then walked away entirely. For years, she lived with anxiety and depression, often wondering if God was even real.

In 2026, she felt a strong pull on her heart to go back to church. She reached out to a friend from Woodside, who invited her to a service. “I felt immediate comfort,” Kenzie said. “For the first time, I experienced true love and fulfillment through God.”

Kenzie was baptized this year at Woodside. “Since fully surrendering my life to God,” she said, “He has completely changed my heart and shown me a peace and purpose I never thought I could have. I’m so grateful that even when I turned away from Him, He never stopped pursuing me.”

He’s Reaching the Next Generation

In 2025:

• Woodside served an average of 1,364 kids on Sunday mornings.

• 820 students met weekly in small groups.

• 1,586 college students were reached through Woodside’s university initiatives.

• 227 kids, students, and young adults were baptized.

He’s Transforming Lives

After attending Woodside for almost a decade as a non-believer, Igor dedicated his life to Christ in early 2026. At his baptism, he said:

“When my wife wanted to come to Woodside, I went to support her. Year after year, I was proud that I found the Gospel too fantastical to be true. As an agnostic, I believed that my life was in my own hands.

I spent decades putting myself and my pleasure above all. As all addictive behaviors eventually do, mine finally came to a point of discovery. My mask was taken off, and my bankrupt character and soul were exposed for all to see. I hit rock bottom, and I saw no way out of it.

In that moment, when I was observing the wreckage of my life with no hope, Jesus grabbed a hold of me and opened my eyes. God was always chasing me, working miracles and making a way for my immense pride to crack. I could not deny the presence of God in my life. He has given me self-worth and dignity because nothing I can do will make Jesus love me more or less than He already does.

I have repented of my sinful behaviors and died to myself to make room for the Lord to lead. I have begun to involve myself in our church community, and I have started to immerse myself in the Word of God, not as a skeptic and scoffer, but with the open wonder of a student learning there is a better way to live: with God at the helm of my life.

I dedicate my life to our Lord Jesus Christ, and I willingly submit to His will to love God with all my heart and to truly love my neighbor as I do myself.”

He’s Reaching Our Neighbors

• Love Thy Neighbor
  In the spring of 2026, 654 Woodsiders participated in service projects across 23 communities.

In 2025:

• Approximately 20,466 people were impacted by the 3,411 Thanksgiving Boxes that Woodsiders helped provide local families.

• 40 trafficking survivors in southeast Michigan were supported by our anti-trafficking partners.

• 8,796 members of the Pontiac community were served through the Dream Centers’ education, economic empowerment, and sustainable housing programs.

He’s Restoring Hope

Since childhood, Ximena struggled with anxiety and a persistent feeling that she wasn’t safe in her own body. Although she attended church and occasionally prayed, she never truly understood who Jesus was or why He would care about her.

As she got older, anxiety and feelings of unworthiness spiraled into depression, self-harm, an eating disorder, and substance abuse. By 2023, she’d made up her mind that the world would be better off without her. During this time, a family of believers came alongside Ximena and invited her to watch Woodside’s Sunday morning livestream.

“The biggest difference between their life and mine was that Jesus was at the center,” Ximena said. “The way they loved each other planted a seed of hope.”

The seed had been planted, but Ximena still struggled with the belief that her life didn’t matter. After surviving a suicide attempt, Ximena decided to give Jesus a try—and Jesus showed up for her in such a powerful way that she couldn’t help but follow Him.

“As time went on, it’s not like my life became all rainbows and butterflies,” she said. “But He helped me with all this shame and guilt that I had been carrying on my shoulders. Little by little, He started to unload that burden.”

Over the last two years, Jesus has transformed Ximena from the inside out, changing the way she sees Him, the world, and herself.

“Jesus is my life,” Ximena said. “He is now the firm foundation that I stand on. He has replaced all that desperation with joyful curiosity. Every day, I used to wake up and my first thought was, ‘Why am I alive?’ Even in the beginning stages of getting to know Him, I would confess those things to Him—’Jesus, You say this, but I still feel like I don’t want to be here.’ But now I am genuinely happy that I have a life worth living.”

He’s Reaching the Nations

• Woodside currently supports 42 active missionary families and 13 global partners.

In 2025:

• 301 Woodsiders mobilized to 15 different countries on 28 different short-term teams.

• 672 churches were planted by our global partners.

• 5,991 church planters, pastors, and evangelists were trained by our global partners.

• 276 widows and orphans were cared for by our global partners.

• 66,803 people made professions of faith through the ministry of our global partners.

• 340,969 people around the world were served by our global partners.

He’s Building His Church

After experiencing the love of Jesus through a local church, a Hindu family from southern India was recently baptized together.

“We don’t know much about Jesus,” one uncle said, “but when we saw the way the church in our village treated the baby girl in our family, we couldn’t help but wonder what was different about the God these people served.”

The baby girl he was referring to is his young niece, Lahari.

In many parts of India, baby girls are often seen as burdens rather than blessings. Most Indian families significantly prefer sons to daughters because economic, religious, social, and emotional norms favor males and make females less desirable in the household. This results in many young girls being neglected or discarded each year because of their gender.

OBGYN Sheila Daniel founded the “It’s a Girl” Project in 2015 with her husband, Mano, a longtime partner of Woodside Bible Church. The husband-and-wife duo leads a group of missionaries known as Leaders in Obscurity, which invests into Indian communities through passionate evangelism, discipleship, and church planting.

Through their ministry, a local pastor named Deva was equipped to care for Lahari and 13 other vulnerable girls in his village, meeting their practical needs while demonstrating the love of Jesus to their families.

“Pastor Deva told us that his God is called Jesus, and that all people are valuable because they are made in His image,” the uncle continued. “I was shocked to see the compassion of Jesus in the Christians. They cared about our baby more than anyone in our family. It was the first God I had ever encountered whose followers cared enough about people’s suffering to do something.”

Do You Have a Story to Share?

God is moving at Woodside, and we want to celebrate what He’s doing across our campuses! Do you have a story to share? Send it our way!