Crossroads Permanent Home: Part I

This week, I'll be sharing about Crossroads plan for the future in a series of blog posts and email blasts to help get everyone up to speed on our current plams and timetable for a permanent home for Crossroads Church.

"A church isn't a building, it's a family.  But every family needs a home."  -  Rick Warren

Rick Warren had a reason to say that.  Saddleback Church had their first service in 1980 with 205 people, and was a "portable church" without a permanent home for many years.  Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek in Barrington, Illinois shares a similar story - one not unlike our own.  They started out in 1975 in a movie theatre, where they met every Sunday for over six years before they had the opportunity to build.  Today both church's have grown to more than 20,000 members each.  What will God do at Crossroads?

"Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin..." 

Zechariah 4:10

We started in our house with 33 people.  A few months later it was 65 people in a rented storefront.  A few months later 172 met in a rented movie theatre.  Today, over 2400 people have attended Crossroads Church.  While our average attendance on Sunday morning is around 270, we have over 400 regular attenders, with nearly 800 either in attendance or remaining connected to Crossroads through our website or other electronic resources.

"Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain".  Psalm 127:1

A "win" for us has never been to have the biggest church in town, or become a "mega-church", or have to have the local cops direct traffic because our parking lot is so clogged.  At Crossroads, a "win" is defined as influencing people for Christ.  Portable, or permanent, God has given us abundant opportunity to do just that, with each new group of flight school students, and each new family that moves to Enterprise.  Even though the face of Crossroads Church is constantly changing, we are most definitely a family.  And a family needs a home.

In November of 2007 - long before we opened our home for the first service - we negotiated a lease agreement with Clark Theatres to use the Colleege Cinema on Sunday mornings for our church services.  But it didn't make sense to start doing that until we grew a little.  We started in the College Cinema in August of 2008, and have met there every Sunday since.  And Mack (Clark) Clark who owns Clark Theatres has been a fantastic landlord!

We had a standing verbal agreement from the beginning that when Clark moved, he would give us first right of refusal to purchase the building.  In the Spring of 2010, we made it official with a formal purchase agreement.  Clark's plan was to build a 10 screen multiplex on land he owned adjacent to the Enterprise Wal-Mart.  His target date for moving in was May 2011.  We kicked off the "I Love My Church" capital campain with a goal of raising $150 thousand by May 2011.  We received pledges (commitments) that equaled $90 thousand, to be honored by May of 2011.  As of last week, we had deposited since last June a total of just over $50 thousand in honored pledges.  As of last week, Clark is still in the financing and pre-design stages of his project.  We are so humbled by those who honored those pledges, and so grateful for everything Clark has done to help Crossroads get off the ground.  But clearly, we're not where we thought we'd be.  So... 

What do you do when God doesn't do what you thought he was going to do?  You do what anyone would do who was confident that God was with them.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about what "PLAN B" looks like, as we move toward the dream of a home for our church family.