We all went to Elkhart last weekend and had a pretty good time just being a family together, staying at a hotel and all that.
We got to see a real estate agent and someone from the chamber of commerce, and though the city had a lot of really nice things going for it, there were some major red flags as well. There hasn’t been much growth in the city or in the surrounding areas recently and even though the county grew 30,000 over the previous decade, the estimates have it growing by only about 1,000 over the next decade!
Additionally, there are churches everywhere! I was seriously surprised at the incredible number of churches we saw in just the brief time we were there.
Things like that make me think that the existing churches should unify to reach their city, and starting a new church in the area might be more divisive than anything else.