Building Fund Pledge

Building Presentation

March 14, 2010

If you’re visiting us, I need to take a couple of minutes to share some church family news and I hope you’ll bear with me for about 10 minutes. We’ve been in a series for the last month called building where we’ve been looking at our role in co-laboring with Christ in the building of His church based on the Great Commission. But we also chose that the word building because it has given us a chance to share the growing conviction that the Lord is inviting us as a congregation into a new adventure of faith – that is praying, working, and giving towards the purchase of a more permanent church home. Building as a noun.

There has been a growing sense in the leadership team that the next important step for this congregation to take is to acquire a building. I know that many of you share that sense and have been praying about this for a while.

The Catholic Church

At this point in time, the property that keeps coming to our attention is a Catholic Church building that is for sale in Painted Post on High Street. The property consists of a church sanctuary that seats approximately 350 and has a large fellowship hall in the basement. It also has a house attached and a small school building behind the church. In total it’s about 13 or 14K square feet. It also has ample parking.

• Location is excellent in terms of visibility and traffic. It would be approximately a 2000% increase in drive by traffic! Cause here there isn’t much drive by traffic, and there hundreds if not thousands of cars drive by every day.

• It’s a pretty building though we would need to put some work into it to make it home for us.

• Great value – it is appraised at 600K and to build it new would be over 1.5 million dollars. They are asking 450K but were willing to take 375K last year and we think they would still be willing.

• Also a possibility we could rent the school building out during the week to help supplement expenses.

• We believe it’s where the Lord is leading us, but if it sells before we are ready to buy it, we will trust God’s sovereignty that He has something better for us. We will find that and move forward with that.

• Talk about a lot of numbers – what does that mean for us? What do we need to raise? And why a building? Why not just continue to rent the school indefinitely? Jonathan has designed a graphic that will help us walk through these questions.

Why a building?

Building to go.

Not at all because we equate bricks and glass and parking lots with being a church, because we don’t. But because we realize what a vitally important tool a building is for reaching our community with the gospel.

I have often walked the streets of our community praying – there are thousands of people, individuals, families, couples who need the good news of Jesus Christ. But we are almost invisible to them because we have no presence in the community. When we have done outreaches, we have seen time and again there is a reluctance in unchurched people to visit a church that meets in a elementary school. So we are building to go – to reach our community more effectively.

Building to grow.

There is so much more we want to do in terms of contexts for discipleship and spiritual growth, but the lack of an available facility has been a hindrance to our doing some of these things. We long to have the ability to have regular prayer meetings without having to schedule a separate building and being at the mercy of their availability.

Building for the future.

We want to build for the next generation. We don’t want this church to die out with us, hand the baton on to the next generation – we want to reach the next generation with the gospel and give them a church they can grow in and go from.

What do we need?

We have 35k currently in our savings fund. Our first goal is to get 75K (just 40K more) because at that point we feel we can launch out into serious discussion with the CC and exploration of bank mortgages. We hope to reach that goal within a year. That’s a big step but by no means too big for God!

• Between 75-100K we would be in a good position to move in. I think we can reach that sooner than we might think we can.

• But 100K is a soft goal, not a hard goal. We would want to continue to give and trust God to pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible. Can you imagine not having a mortgage at all? More money to be invested in other kingdom priorities.

How can we do it?

And they came, everyone whose heart stirred him, and everyone whose spirit moved him, and brought the LORD's contribution to be used for the tent of meeting, and for all its service... Exodus 35:21 (ESV)

The Israelites caught the vision for the building of the tabernacle, and God moved on their hearts to give generously and in no time they had more than they needed. We can do this with the Lord’s help and it can be a wonderful testimony of what God can do in and through and for His people, but we need to join our hearts and hands together in unity. This can’t be something a few people do, but everyone together. Not equal giving, but equal sacrifice.

And I’m not going to kid you: it will take sacrifice on the part of everyone in the church. If we give what we won’t miss or notice, it’s not going to happen. We need to believe that this is a good investment in the light of eternity – one that holds the potential to make an eternal difference in many lives through the furtherance of the gospel, and prayerfully ask the Lord what we are to give, look at our budgets, and give generously. Share some practical thoughts:

o Step out in faith – don’t wreck your budget, but let your commitment express faith.

o Ask yourself: Is there any luxury or habit that you can give up as a sacrifice to the Lord and take that savings and put towards the building fund? (Starbucks, eating lunch out, weekly movies, cable tv, etc.)

o Consider on top of commitment also committing to the Lord any unexpected, extra money that comes in. What great testimonies we will have if we commit unknown money to the Lord’s building.

o Care groups will be planning yard sales to raise money.

o Youth also can consider ways to raise money.

o Come to us with any ideas you have for raising funds. We don’t just want to raise the funds – we want to make some memories as a church family together doing it.

o Ultimately we trust the Lord and look to the Lord, but the Lord doesn’t want to do it all for us – He uses means and He looks for commitment and sacrifice from His people. There are several examples like the one I read from Exodus where God led His people to give to the building of His house and blessed them for their heart for His house.

At this time the ushers are going to hand out pledge cards for you to take home and prayerfully consider what pledge you will make. (Go ahead ushers). Please cut the top portion off and hang it on your fridge as a reminder to pray. I’m going to ask that we bring our pledges in next week to present to the Lord together.

Let’s pray together.