Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Is Our Church Moving?

It's been a pretty crazy last week and I'm pretty pumped about the future of our church. We had our annual business meeting (hate that terminology) this past Sunday and I announced that we are actively pursuing the possibility of moving our church. The deacons and elders have confirmed what God has been revealing to me over these last few months and that is that we need to pursue this dream. I am the 4th pastor to attempt to move this church off of the side of the hill in the last few decades and hopefully this attempt will be successful. If you are just hearing this news for the first time, you may have some questions. Here are a few...

Why do we need to move?
Answer. We don't. We can reach people at our current location and have a nice community church. But what if we can reach even more people at an easily accessible (more central) location. At the end of the day we could end up staying put and trying other things. But what if at the end of the day we moved to another (more visible) location that would enable us to offer more things to our community and reach thousands instead of hundreds of people for Jesus. Maybe the questions is not, "why do we need to move?," maybe it's, "why not?!"

When would we move?
We are in research and dreaming mode right now and then will come the need for collaboration and vision casting to the church body. Either way it will be a 2-5 year process. This is long term planning to reach the maximum amount of people in our growing community.

What about the changes we just made to our church?
It will take 2-5 years to move even if we had land today, so the changes that we've made to our facility will get plenty of use. The things that we have just purchased (screens, chairs) could come with us or sold to a new buyer. We wouldn't lose any of the money that we've spent. It's all investment for growth, it will pay for itself over the next year. Also, it's likely that another church could purchase our current location and continue to use it for the Kingdom of God.

What changed about the current vision?

Nothing and everything. We are passionate about reaching lost people and will change anything to reach more people. We've changed just about everything about our church over the past 5 years and now we are looking at changing our location. I don't think that we should limit ourselves by our current facility. I am thankful for what a previous generation has provided for us. We are fortunate to be debt free! I believe this only positions us to take wise eternal risks, not simply enjoy the safety of that reality. My vision for this community grows stronger and I believe that there are no limits to what God can do through our church in the coming years!

I'll continue to answer more questions in regards to this topic in the coming days, weeks and months.