Exciting Times
For the past few weeks at LCC, we have been in a series of messages at our church going through the book of Exodus. I called the series Time to Move for two reasons:
- The story of Exodus is a story of a time when God had to move his people from one place to another, and it covers all the things that went into that move.
- Our church is at a turning point in our journey that means we also are coming up to a time of relocation.
Let me spend a moment or two on that second point.
LCC Recap
Back in 2005, my wife and I were sensing God leading us to make a change in our ministry lives. I had been in Chicago for four years as the pastor of a church there, but a number of things were falling into place to lead us to think God wanted to relocate us. We didn’t take that lightly, though. In fact, it took about a year’s worth of consultation with fellow pastors, denominational leaders, family and friends, and even some professional counseling, but the end of that process was that we were determined to come to Lafayette and start a brand new church from scratch.
It wasn’t that Lafayette was a “bad” town or that we thought Lafayette didn’t have any good churches. Our motivation for starting a new church here was a combination of factors like these: we liked the community, we wanted to build a family here, we had connections to Purdue, and some family lived nearby.
However, at the top of the list of why we wanted to start a church in Lafayette was this shocking statistic: The average church attendance of people in this community was below 30%! For over 70% of the people in this town, church seemed irrelevant, boring, or unimportant. We were convinced (and we still are) that if the people in this town could get a taste of a relationship with Jesus that was encouraging, a connection to a supportive community, and an understanding of the simplicity of God’s Word, they would really respond to it and their lives would be changed for the better.
But there was one other statistic that shocked us. We investigated the southside of Lafayette and learned that if every church on the southside were vibrant, healthy, and filled with people just twice each week, that would only cover about 6,000 people out of a population closer to 30,000!
Jen and I were convinced that the people of Lafayette’s southside needed to know Jesus and there weren’t enough churches to do the job, and as we did more investigating, we began to learn that there was a big need for not just a new church but a new kind of church.
So, in January 2006, Jen and I felt like Moses as we moved from what we knew in Chicago to the strange unknown of Lafayette.
Since then, we have seen some amazing things. Let me just list off some bullet points of lessons I’ve learned since we moved here:
- In 2006, nearly every stranger I talked to about church told me that they didn’t go, but they believed in God and would be interested in a Bible Study. They were interested in mine, but they didn’t feel comfortable coming to my house for it. People weren’t interested in “going to church” but they were also not interested in going to a stranger’s house.
- In 2006, every time I told someone that I was starting a church, the first question they would ask was, “Where are you building it?” and to this day, whenever I tell people that I’m a pastor, the first question they ask is this: “Where is your church?” People in this community expect churches to have buildings.
- In 2007, we saw hundreds of people come to our church for a visit based on the proximity of our church to their house. We had a sign in front of a school, and people were intrigued by that enough, and it was close enough to their house, that they would check us out on Sunday; however, each person expressed hesitation at a church staying in a school for long. Every single one I spoke with asked me the same question: “When are you going to build a building?”
- From Fall 2007 to Summer 2010, we met downtown first at the Holiday Inn and then at the Long Center. It was a fun time driving our big box truck up to those locations, setting up and tearing down every Sunday morning, but there was a lot of inconvenience and hassle, and I learned that singles and young couples without kids were interested in the downtown locations, but our original southsider families were not.
- In 2010 we leased permanent space and returned to the southside of Lafayette, and since that time, we have seen our attendance increase significantly year over year teaching me the lesson again that (1) we are a church that connects with people who live on the southside and (2) stability matters.
Are you sensing a theme?
- God led Jen and I to Lafayette’s southside to connect with the people who live here.
- The people we can reach most easily are also people who value stability.
- Stability for a church, in the eyes of the community, means a building.
- Therefore, it seems lear that for us to effectively reach out to the people God has called and equipped us to reach, we need a good building on the southside of Lafayette.
Now, those things are pretty clear in my mind, but I don’t want to lead the church based simply on my own conclusions, so I pulled together a team of people this past summer to help me think, pray, and research our options as a church.
A Great Opportunity
At the beginning of the summer, I contacted a number of people in the church to develop a research team that would help us evaluate our options as a church moving forward. It was clear to all of us that we have maximized the usefulness of our current facility, and in order for us to be more effective at our mission of reaching people, we need to be in a bigger facility, so I got these 5 people in a room with me (Jake, Joe, Jim, Kenlyn, and Katrina) and we started talking about what we need as a church moving forward. I asked them to start saying prayers and to start making phone calls to see what we could learn.
And you know what we learned in the months since that group started doing their work?
We learned that renting any space workable for us on the southside is crazy expensive, like $12,000 per month!
We had to conclude that our only real options are to move away from the southside or build something of our own.
Therefore, after months of researching all our options, I’ve decided along with our Board of Elders (Billy and Brian) and the Elders in Training (Kevin and Jake) to pursue the purchase of property near Veteran’s Memorial Parkway South. We have identified three great locations, but one of them is standing out in all our minds as the best one, and we have made a few first contacts with the owner. He seems very interested in selling the land to us.
So that means we have some really great land at a really great price and a highly motivated seller, but do you know what we don’t have? Money!
Starting a Building Fund
I have already begun the work of pursuing financing for a purchase of land, but the truth is we can’t even finance anything unless we have money to put down on it, and on top of that, we can’t afford the payments on a loan like that with our budget as tight as it is.
So I’m writing this blog post to officially launch the LCC Building Fund and to point you to a new page on our website talking about how we handle everyday church finances: Our Finances. If you have ever wondered about how the finances at LCC work, that’s the page you want to check out. However, right now, I want to talk about the Building Fund.
In the history of the church, we have done a number of fundraisers, but we have never kept any of that money for ourselves. We have always raised money for other ministries and organizations. We have supported Cary Home for Children, the Lafayette Peers Project, Matrix Pregnancy Resource Center, Salvation Army and others, and we will continue to do those things, but now it’s time for us to also consider our own future. The future for us requires us to think about buying land and building a building, so let me outline the main points for you.
- In order for us to get some land, 10 acres are going to cost us between $400,000 and $500,000 depending on how eager the landowners are to sell.
- Financing a purchase like that will require a down payment of about $100,000.
- Building a building that will work for us will cost about $2 million.
- The good news is that a loan on $2 million will be right around $10,000 per month, and that is actually a reasonable figure for us to be considering at this time!
In light of all that, I’m asking you to spend a few moments thinking about making an end of the year contribution or two to our brand new building fund.
You see, everything we are as a church is a combination of God’s blessings, some hard work, and the financial donations of people. That means if you are grateful for this church, you are grateful in part for financial gifts made by visionary people who chose to bless you without ever even meeting you.
If you are excited about our future, then let me ask you to put some money into it! We need people who will step up today like all the people who gave so much to help us get started.
What do you think? I’m so excited about all that God has done through our church, and I’m thrilled that he has brought you and us in contact with each other. I’m also thrilled at the thought of what’s next for us together as a church, so that’s why I’m so excited about this next phase.
Please join us in this!
How to Give
We have it set up so that you can bring a check any Sunday with “Building Fund” or “BF” in the memo line, or you can set up a donation using our online giving page, but remember that PayPal charges us 2% on every transaction (that’s actually the cheapest rate you can get for online transactions), so in-person and mailed checks save us a significant amount of money.
If you want to use your bank’s bill pay system or if you want to mail a check yourself, you can send checks to this address:
Lafayette Community Church
PO Box 4993
Lafayette, IN 47903
May God bless us as we enter this new phase of our church together!
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