A church plant of the North Texas Presbytery (PCA) — a mission work with a big vision, taking root beside one of the largest military communities in the country. We're just getting started, and there's room for you to help build it.
To build a faithful, confessional church that will reach Killeen and the soldiers and families of Fort Hood with the gospel of Christ — for generations to come.
Hill Country Church is a church plant — a mission work of the North Texas Presbytery (PCA). We are the only confessionally Reformed congregation sitting right beside one of the largest military communities in the country, and we are convinced that God has placed us in this unusually strategic spot for the gospel.
Being a church plant means we are not a finished product. We don't yet have the building, the programs, and the ministries you would find at a large, established church — and that is part of the invitation. We are laying a foundation, and we are looking for people who are ready to roll up their sleeves and help build something that will outlast us all.
Our vision is to grow into a strong, established church — one rooted deeply enough in God's Word and the ordinary means of grace to serve Killeen and the thousands of military families who pass through Fort Hood. If you are looking for a place to be needed, not just to attend, we would love to build alongside you.
We hold to the faith the church has confessed for centuries — summarized in the Westminster Standards and shared across the Presbyterian Church in America.
The Bible is the Word of God — fully trustworthy and our final authority for what we believe and how we live.
We are saved not by our own effort but by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone — to the glory of God alone.
We confess the historic Reformed faith as summarized in the Westminster Confession and the Shorter and Larger Catechisms.
As a mission work of the North Texas Presbytery, Hill Country Church is led by a provisional session of pastors and elders:
Jeff Shamess serves as pastor of Hill Country Church. A 2001 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, he served as an Air Force officer before being called to ministry, earning his Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary in 2013. He then served as one of the pastors of Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for six years. In 2017 Jeff answered a call to the military chaplaincy and today serves as an active-duty Army chaplain, walking alongside soldiers and their families at Fort Liberty, Fort Carson, and now Fort Hood — which gives him a particular heart for the military families of the Killeen community, who know the moves, the deployments, and the longing for a church home.
Jeff and his wife, Jenny, have been married for twenty-three years and have five children, Miriam, Jacob, Esther, Daniel, and Sophianna.
