About Joy Fellowship Church
1510 Lindberg Dr.
Slidell, LA 70458
(985) 781-9777 voice
(985) 781-9777 fax
seniorpastor@joyfellowshipchurch.com
Useful Links:
Our Service Times
Our services are 10:00am on Sunday mornings and 7:00pm on Wednesday evenings.
If you are looking for a house of God that feels like home and a place to worship
him, we would love to have you join us. Feel free to contact us by by phone and
or email
for more information.
Our Vision
We gave up our vision to pick up the vision that God has, that none should perish
and all should come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So, we will go the
distance to see souls saved. Our whole Katrina outreach, that takes all of our staff
and volunteers about 12 hours a day, is about one thing? One thing. All of the work,
all of the food and supplies, the hot meals that we serve to hundreds each day,
is all so that we can share the gospel with them and pray with them for salvation.
Our Mission
We want to build a habitation for the presence of the Lord. Where ever
we go, what ever we do, we want the presence of God. How? By going lower, going
deeper in his presence, enjoying Him and spending time letting Him enjoy us. Living
a life behind the veil and spreading the joy.
God showed us years ago that we would be a Nehemiah church, preparing a place for
the presence of God that is built out of the rubble. We see believers as the blessed
vessels who are given the commission to serve and minister at every opportunity.
So, we give it our all. We hope to build out of the rubble of people's lives, a
glorious church. We hope to build out of the rubble of our city, a better city,
built on a better foundation, that is in revival. And that is why we chose our name,
Joy. Because in Nehemiah, he said these profound words "the joy of the Lord is our
strength" . It is all Him, always has been, always will be. And so, in
Him, we endeavor to do it.
Our History
Our church was started out of revival that broke out at our mother church, Victory
Fellowship, in New Orleans, LA., in 1995. The Lord gave us a word at that time about
being a Nehemiah church. A church that would build a habitation for God's presence...but
here was the catch. God wanted us to build it out of rubble and burnt stones! We
did not know that years later, it would be literal. Since hurricane Katrina, things
have changed for our ministry. We are still revival minded. We still long for the
presence of the Holy Spirit and linger there as much as possible. But now we are
having a different kind of revival, because it is happening in our parking lot.
One night, about 3 months before the storm, Pastor Larry woke up at 4:44. The next
night, he woke up again at 4:44. The next night and the next and then God spoke
to Him and told him to look in the fourth book, forth chapter, verse 44. It gave
a number of three thousand, two hundred families. The Lord spoke to him and told
him that we would be ministering to that number of families very soon. So, the pastor
called a 3 week Daniel fast and told us to get the building ready. We had a new
bill board sign put up at the street, which was a great expense for our small church.
He had us clean out closets and the kitchen cabinets. He told us to get ready for
the word God sent. So we did. Pastor Leslie began to have dreams, night after night
that the services were taking place in the parking lot with a lot of people that
I didn't know. Then it happened. August 29, 2005... Katrina's eye passed over our
city. Pastors Larry and Leslie and their family returned as soon as the storm was
over, traveling north to get gas and food and then traveling back to Slidell. Pastor
Larry came in on August 31 and brought his family back the following day. They slept
on the floor that night, exhausted. No power, no water, no phone or cell phone service,
no police...only a great big God. When morning was dawning, Pastor Leslie was in
the parking lot praying. A semi trailer and tour bus arrived from Nashville. The
musicians arrived with food and water. Christian artists from all over had collected
money and purchased survival supplies. That day, we began searching the city for
survivors that needed food and water. They found elderly and handicapped people
who had lived through the storm. Some pilots arrived from Miami...out of nowhere,
with their small plane. We loaded it up with granola and nutrigrain bars and dumped
them over people's houses because there were so many trapped because of fallen trees
and debris. Before the end of the week, members of the church began to arrive to
join the pastor's family in the good work. Many of their homes were damaged, so
everyone slept in the offices of the church.
Two days later, the pastor and his sons went to the small, badly damaged, Slidell
airport to wait for a plane to arrive with food and supplies. They saw a large,
old World War 2 plane on the strip and went to investigate. They introduced themselves
to the pilot and he responded with, "Hi, they call me angel 44." Wow. When he heard
the story about the "44" dreams, he was astounded. That pilot was connected to Kenneth
Copeland Ministries and was here looking for a ministry to help. That was the start
of a partnership with that ministry that has blessed many thousands of people in
our city since.
The work had begun in earnest. We came up with a drive through system whereby cars
would drive around our half circle drive and receive their water, food, hygiene,
cleaning, and baby supplies. As they came to the end of the line, they received
hot meals and prayer. To date, over 1,500 people have been saved!
The other interesting thing that God is doing is touching the volunteers that have
come from all over the world. They work in our relief center for a day or two or
a week or two and leave on fire for God. They are getting touched and filled personally,
in a powerful way and are bringing that "fire" home to their churches. Pastors have
called us and asked what we have done to their people...we tell them that we are
having a visitation of the presence of God and it's not us!
We have been learning as we go and are certain that our hands are being trained
for war. As the end approaches, more disasters will occur. We are preparing ourselves
to send teams for first response to disaster. We are preparing for revival.
Pastor Leslie