Kahiel
Active Member
I decided to break this off from my other prayer request thread. (As a side note, my wife is back to work and feeling better though she is still plagued by pain.)
As I stated in the previous thread, my church has been moving forward after having been stuck for the last five or six years. A little history; we began meeting at a local high school. It started with about twenty people and grew quite a bit the first year. Attendance went up and down over the years as pastors came and went about 13 years ago they called our previous pastor who moved the church from the school into a rented store front about ten years ago. The church promptly doubled in size and we (I started becoming involved around this time) expanded into the space next door and continued growing. At that point the pastor started looking for a building. We had many doors slammed in our faces (in one case the owners of the building next door took a bid lower than ours).
Last year our pastor resigned an took a church in PA. We called a new pastor just as we were finding some serious problems which came to light because the previous pastor left. We had a worship leader who didn't listen to Christian music who was also hiding the fact she had become a lesbian. A previous youth pastor had been accused of sexual assault but nothing had been done about it and the youth and their parents were ready to leave the church because of the current youth pastor. We had a guy leading a second Sunday night worship service in the evenings who didn't agree with our church theologically and was openly critical of the pastor and leadership team during service (turned out he was trying to form his own church from within ours).
God did a lot of house cleaning as we did as well. He gave us some awesome opportunities to minister to the community. Toward the end of Summer He also brought us the opportunity to lease to own a building for $800k which was on the market at $1.9 million. A definite praise. We hired an architect who had worked with us during the renovations at the store front and made plans to renovate the building. We signed the lease and began demo. The architect told us we wouldn't need building permits because it was a mostly cosmetic remodel. Just as we were ready to being construction we were told we needed to pull permits. So we began the paperwork to pull permits this is the point where we found out that we were going to need to either put in a fire suppression system in the entire building or we would have to erect a series of fire walls which would cut the sanctuary by a two thirds (from 700 seats to 300). This is obviously not an expense we had planned for.
Money has always been tight for us (more so than other churches) and hiring the previous youth pastor drained our savings. God provided an additional $9k from our denomination on Monday so he is definitely on the move. What we need prayer for is our pastor (Ed) because he has been working the building project and his other duties above and beyond (80 hrs a week) our congregation who are constantly asking questions and certain individuals who have been spreading rumors and gossip and for God's wisdom to let God take the lead and for us to see the doors he is opening. The enemy has found fertile ground for sewing the seeds of disunity.
As I stated in the previous thread, my church has been moving forward after having been stuck for the last five or six years. A little history; we began meeting at a local high school. It started with about twenty people and grew quite a bit the first year. Attendance went up and down over the years as pastors came and went about 13 years ago they called our previous pastor who moved the church from the school into a rented store front about ten years ago. The church promptly doubled in size and we (I started becoming involved around this time) expanded into the space next door and continued growing. At that point the pastor started looking for a building. We had many doors slammed in our faces (in one case the owners of the building next door took a bid lower than ours).
Last year our pastor resigned an took a church in PA. We called a new pastor just as we were finding some serious problems which came to light because the previous pastor left. We had a worship leader who didn't listen to Christian music who was also hiding the fact she had become a lesbian. A previous youth pastor had been accused of sexual assault but nothing had been done about it and the youth and their parents were ready to leave the church because of the current youth pastor. We had a guy leading a second Sunday night worship service in the evenings who didn't agree with our church theologically and was openly critical of the pastor and leadership team during service (turned out he was trying to form his own church from within ours).
God did a lot of house cleaning as we did as well. He gave us some awesome opportunities to minister to the community. Toward the end of Summer He also brought us the opportunity to lease to own a building for $800k which was on the market at $1.9 million. A definite praise. We hired an architect who had worked with us during the renovations at the store front and made plans to renovate the building. We signed the lease and began demo. The architect told us we wouldn't need building permits because it was a mostly cosmetic remodel. Just as we were ready to being construction we were told we needed to pull permits. So we began the paperwork to pull permits this is the point where we found out that we were going to need to either put in a fire suppression system in the entire building or we would have to erect a series of fire walls which would cut the sanctuary by a two thirds (from 700 seats to 300). This is obviously not an expense we had planned for.
Money has always been tight for us (more so than other churches) and hiring the previous youth pastor drained our savings. God provided an additional $9k from our denomination on Monday so he is definitely on the move. What we need prayer for is our pastor (Ed) because he has been working the building project and his other duties above and beyond (80 hrs a week) our congregation who are constantly asking questions and certain individuals who have been spreading rumors and gossip and for God's wisdom to let God take the lead and for us to see the doors he is opening. The enemy has found fertile ground for sewing the seeds of disunity.
