15 year anniversary of Impact...backstory.
I wanted to take a moment today to reflect on the 15 years since Impact's conception and all the moments--both breath-taking and gut-wrenching--that God used in the spiritual formation of this beautiful body of Christ he birthed in Lowell, MI.
It cannot be overstated that God brought some good-hearted, stout-hearted people to join the church in its first days who yoked together and turned some serious ground for the kingdom. I don't think I've ever heard of an assembly of souls with such high capacity and humility that came out of the woodwork of Lowell to join this entrepreneurial endeavor. People of different ages with different gifts and different backgrounds twisted together to form a strong rope of revolution.
In the first months, people were joining the team through word of mouth and assuming ownership of the mission as if they themselves were called to plant the church. People who weren't involved in church before or were nominal attenders in their previous church would step into high-stakes involvement within weeks, offering their time and talents and treasures to move the movement forward. When it usually takes years to form solidarity and camaraderie, this fast-forming group latched onto the mission of reaching un- and de-churched people and ran after it with reckless abandon.
It wasn't uncommon for people to spend 20+ hours at the church throughout a given week meeting needs, filling positions, attending meetings, leading programs, and starting ministries that met emerging needs. The Leadership Advisory Team (LAT) would meet every Monday night for the first several years from 6pm to whenever things were talked through, figured out, and celebrated/solved. I've heard of stories of 6-hour meetings going past midnight as the church was growing so rapidly and needed discernment and decisions made in real-time, nimbly and fluidly. There wasn't time for months to transpire, guarding the mission and guiding the vision required constant hands-on leadership. I'm so grateful for the many "lives-laid-down" that jump-started the church plant in a season when it could have exploded/imploded under the pressure. So many people stood in the gap and stood at their post even when momentum could have created mayhem. We owe so much to so many who believed in Impact's purpose with all their being...they were radical, ruthless, and relentless in their pursuit of the lost.
It wasn't long before they had to go to two services in their little A-frame facility that was originally built for about 80 people tops. Within 4 months, they launched a second Sunday service and volunteers kicked in to train up more newbies to join the mission...the buzz was palpable. God blessed and people continued to trickle in as word hit the streets that this place was a "grace space", a refreshing alternative to the church many had made up in their minds over the years. There was laughter, games, forced community, down-to-earth messages, vulnerability, and above all, love. Lots and lots of love that pulsated and permeated the whole property and beyond.
After a year, there was a desire to start a third service on a Saturday Night to accommodate the growth. The need for room was apparent, so it wasn't long before a Saturday Night expression was launched without a KidZone option, due to the lack of adults to run another program on a completely different night. You couldn't simply attend a service and serve a service as was common for the two Sunday morning services. The addition of the Saturday Night service started with 60 people, but after about 5 months it was down to 12-15 people heading into the volatility of summer. The decision was made to put it into a coma and relaunch it in the fall with a different philosophy and a full children's ministry. With a new vision cast and new crop of volunteers recruited, we gave it another shot. Failure was never seen as fatal, in fact, it was celebrated as an attempt to accomplish great things, God things. Ever since the relaunch, we've never looked back. The Saturday Night service to this day is a vibrant part of our church's culture...but it took at least 5 years to establish a vibrancy and vitality that was healthy and sustainable. I'm so glad people didn't give up when the "going got tough"...so much is owed to the servant-souls that bled for the dream of a Saturday Night expression of church.
But our church wasn't started to just get bigger in Lowell, the vision was to be a church that planted churches that planted churches. So we did something beyond crazy in 2006...we decided to plant our first church in Portland, MI all the while starting a building campaign to build a new worship space and cafe' right in Lowell. It's important to mention that we were barely making budget at the time, just so that you know were weren't rolling around in the dough. This was the kind of risk that existed in this young body that was exceptional and borderline ridiculous. There were lots of questions and hesitations, but the leadership felt strongly that God didn't want us to get used to the comfort of our current situation, but to keep pressing out to reach the un- and de-churched in Lowell and in neighboring communities. So we brought in our first church planter as a resident while we rallied the church to build an $800,000 addition so that we could multiply regionally and grow locally simultaneously. To make a long story short, we launched our first church plant, Epic, and 300 people raised nearly $450,000 to begin to build the new facility that we finally occupied in March of 2017. To say that finances were tight would be the understatement of the century, but God would show up and provide almost like Elijah and the ravens...he gave us our daily bread as he promises to do.
By the time we occupied the building, we continued to grow even as we sent people out to plant Epic. Multiplying didn't impair us, it empowered us, and led to our next church plant which launched in 2017 in Belding, MI with a couple who had come to know Christ at Impact in the first month of its existence. I remember there were several people who thought we were nuts to keep multiplying while were were trying to mature and become healthy as a local body, but we were convinced that multiplying had to be as natural as breathing for people to understand the non-negotiable mandate to go a make disciples and to move to the rhythm of Acts 1:8..."From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and into the ends of the earth." This vision fueled our faith...and so we kept stepping out with risk anchored in trust. It resulted in our second church plant in two years making good on the statement we would often share in front of the body that we wanted to "plant 3 in 5 years and 10 in 10 years". We had planted three in the first 5 years of our existence and now it was onto 10 in 10.
Our church had begun to fill up our space and it was our heart to hive off 80-100 people to plant within our community with a different location and a little different focus on families and students. Within a year of our Belding plant, we raised up a leader within our own body and a team formed to start another church in our own little town of Lowell. Ignite launched with about 150 people and though Impact took a hit with our own numbers, it was amazing to watch how God miraculously filled in the gaps with those who were sent out on mission for the expansion of the kingdom. It's been said that a healthy church isn't known for its "seating capacity", it's know for its "sending capacity". This belief galvanized us to keep stretching for more multiplication even as we often struggled to keep Impact afloat with the essential resources of volunteers and finances. It was this pinch that would keep us leaning into God for his unfailing provision to backfill our unrelenting vision. We believed that vision would produce provision. We wouldn't wait for provision before moving forward with the vision...this was a distinctive that as I look back was the unique attribute that drove our church to do the improbable and even the impossible in certain seasons.
Just as things were beginning to accelerate holistically, we had the 2008 economic crash which proved to be a jarring reality in our journey. Numbers were dropping all over the place and resources were drying up as we continued to forge forward in our vision. Against all odds, we planted another church in St. John's during this time, but the effects of this sustained battery on people's budgets tricked over into the church's resources...the ship was taking on water.
It came to a point in the summer of 2009 that we needed to do a special offering called "Miracle May" to backfill the losses and to keep the ship afloat, and man, oh, man did people gave "above and beyond" to support the church and the struggling church plants with funding needed to sustain the great things that God was doing! However, even a year later we were bleeding financially, enough to have an all-church "Save Bruce" (our Executive Pastor at the time) campaign since we were going to have to cut his position on top of all the 10% pay-cuts our staff was taking. It was powerful to watch the church rally to the occasion and raise $70,000 (13,000 of it through a lawn sale where people were selling their possessions to raise funds) to help pay our bills and to keep our staff in order to sustain the numerical growth of our church. That was the amazing thing, we were growing externally and declining internally simultaneously. God was saving lives as we were simply try to stay alive and keep solvent in this season of recession and depression that many folks were facing.
Still we continued to plant churches, giving 10% of our tithes and offerings to church planting (called at the time, the Nitrogen Network) even in seasons of drought at Impact. It was so embedded in our DNA that we would rather take pay-cuts and lose staff than reduce our 10% contribution to multiplication. It was this radical stance that kept us on mission even in times of great financial famine. We planted churches in Saranac as well as the east side of the state near Detroit while we were thinking strategically about how to deepen our church's health while managing the breadth of ongoing growth we were experiencing as a body. The pressure to retreat from the vision was ever-present, but our leadership was deeply devoted to the original mission of Impact regardless of circumstance. From the outside, it seemed foolish, but on the inside, it was driven by abiding faith.
As we continued to obey God in sacrificial ways, we experienced a season of depth and growth in the Fall of 2011 through a series on the book of Nehemiah. There was something that occurred in that time in our church's history that developed a framework of strength internally and infra-structurally that is still felt to this day. Giving grew by 25% even though the attendance remained the same...disciples were being made as obedience trumped convenience, and generosity eclipsed comfort. Life groups tripled in size in that season and our community began to be anchored in the Word as we followed up the Nehemiah series with a series called "People of the Second Chance" where we collectively read through the whole New Testament as a church and talked about it in Life Groups. The stories of life-change were happening faster than we could capture them and our body was maturing from the toddler phase into the adolescent stage. It wasn't full-on maturity, but it was a giant leap of growth in a short period of time.
In the summer of that same year, we partnered with Swaziland, Africa and began Global Impact, a ministry dedicated to taking care of orphans and widows in the remote regions of Nsogo, Swaziland. Our church has expanded our partnership with Swaziland ever since, adopting a Care Point, selling Timbali crafts made by the widows to generate income for their families, and starting 7 churches in the last 5 years in an effort to be the holistic presence of Jesus in that part of the world. It's so exciting to see our church take Mission's Trips each year and to deepen our relationship with the emerging leaders of Swaziland who are leading the church and their nation towards spiritual revival and renewal. Impact's impact was expanding beyond our borders to the world...a dream that we had envisioned for such a long time.
In time, our church grew beyond our capacity once again, and the new facility that was built in 2007 was busting out at the seams requiring us to dream again of how to "make more room for God to move". We decided to put an expansion on the church that would cost $700,000 and to try and raise 1.4 million to also retire the nearly $700,000 we still carried as a mortgage on our current facility. In 2014 we had a campaign called the "Sacrificial Summit" and after much vision-casting we raised just over 1 million dollars in one-time gifts and 3-year pledges and started building just months later. Within 4 months we raised the money and built the expansion that we occupied in March of 2015 after holding services for 5 weeks at the Lowell Arts Performing Center at the High School. We left our facility with about 900 people and when we returned to the expanded worship space, new lobby, and renovated KidZone 5 weeks later, we started with over 1,100+ on our first week. It was so exciting to see God moving so quickly and clearly in our midst.
It was at the end of 2015 that I could sense that we needed to cast another vision for what to do next. Our church was averaging nearly 1,200 people and the recent expansion was already reaching it's limitations as our parking, KidZone, and worship space were maxed out especially in the fall/winter/spring seasons. It was somewhat discouraging that no sooner did we occupy the new digs that we were having to reimagine our future plans to accommodate the new growth at Impact.
While we were growing at Impact, we were still planting churches more rapidly than ever, we had planted in Ionia, the Prison, and down in West Virginia expanding the church planting network by the year (The network was now called The Greenhouse Network). It seemed like the more we gave away and reproduced, the more we received and grew at our Lowell location as the mother-church of all these church plants. We were up to 17 churches by this time with a new vision of planting 25 churches by the year 2025. The frustration of planting and growing was forcing us to dream up new ideas of reproduction.
In the fall/early winter of 2015 I remember taking some classes on campusing and wondered if we could grow locally by dividing into regional campuses. I went with our teams to various locations and though some would seem promising at first, in time the doors would close for a myriad of reasons. We even looked into possibly purchasing the neighboring doctor's office to build a Community Center that could function as an onsite venue where we could run another concurrent service. But after doing research and realizing that the timing wasn't working out for that transaction, we were left with dead end after dead end. I remember talking with our staff in November of 2015 and feeling so tired and defeated after investing so much time in the next idea and having nothing to show for it. Honestly, it was the first time that I remember chasing after something and not catching it...pursing something and it not coming to fruition. It was a new feeling at Impact where we were so used to having an idea and seeing it rapidly come true. In December, I remember a feeling of exhaustion and exasperation heading into Christmas vacation without a vision for what to do next. I had people asking me, both leaders and attenders: "We're outgrowing this, what's the plan?" I couldn't see anything and I was so used to foresight and forecasting...but I had no other answer other than: "We are waiting on God...it's not clear right now."
I returned from vacation on January 2nd somewhat listless and aimless. I knew how to do the week in and week out ministry at Impact, but I hadn't a clue as to where to go next. I knew that we still had about $600,000 in debt that we were currently aggressively paying down with our Campaign Pledges, but the least of my concerns at this point was debt retirement...I needed a clear vision from God as to what to do next...and it couldn't be a little bandaid, that much I knew. I didn't want to keep building little additions only to outgrow them in a matter of months. It had me all kinds of twisted up inside.
But that same day, January 2nd, right after a morning of meeting to get back in the saddle after Christmas and New Year, I received a voice text at 2:36pm. This voice text would prove to be the most life-altering, mind-blowing, vision-fueling communication from God that one could ever ask for or imagine possible. I just remember this woman from our church leaving a message saying that she had visited her parents over the holidays and they said that they started a foundation where they wanted to pay off the debt of 2 churches a year. She told them about our church and they were interested and wondered if we could fly down to Florida where they lived to talk about our church'w vision and our current debt load. I listen to the voice mail and immediately told Ryan, my Executive Pastor, about it half wondering if it was real or just too good to be true.
To make a long story short, Ryan and I were on this Kingdom donor's private jet in less than two weeks flying down to Florida to visit them about our situation. We stayed there for a couple days getting to know their story and then on the final evening we sat down in their den and talked through our current debt situation. They were very interested in paying off our debt but kept pressing in about our growth and what we were going to do moving forward. Instead of answering them, I turned the question back to them as someone advised me to do a week earlier, "What do you think we need to do given the circumstances?" Being the visionaries they were, they said almost immediately, "It sounds like you need to build a new building. You need to dream big. You're currently landlocked on a 2.7 acre lot and couldn't grow if you wanted to. How much do you think a new facility would cost?"
I didn't have a clue as to what the answer was to that question, but I remember throwing out the number 4 million and watching him wincing a tad. He looked at us and said, "I think it's going to be more than that, in my opinion. I think you guys should go back and get a Needs Analysis to find out specifically what you need and how much it would cost." I swallowed hard and asked a question that felt like I was putting the whole conversation in jeopardy, but I sensed I needed to have the courage to go there.
"If we start pursuing a new facility, there is no way our church can even pursue a 4 million dollar facility let alone something pricier than that. Would you guys be willing to give us a matching grant for up to half of the cost of the new facility in addition to paying off our debt? If God has just put it on your heart to pay off our debt, we are more than grateful, but if we are going to spend time chasing after this dream, we would need help to get there living where we live in a church that already is only two years into the last building campaign for 1.4 million and struggling to raise even 1 million. I know that's not what your vision is for paying off debt for 2 churches a year is, but is that something you would be open to moving forward with us together?" They didn't give a definite answer, but implied that they would be open to considering that as we moved forward with more specific research and real numbers.
So off we went. We got home and aggressively pursued a Needs Analysis that measured some metrics that had to do mainly with parking capacity, worship seating capacity, and Kidzone capacity. After having the consultant crunch the numbers, they came back with specs on what we would need for at least a 10-year plan...7 million dollars. Gulp.
I remember hearing that number and feeling the blood freeze in my veins. For one, I didn't think we could raise 3.5 million even if the Kingdom Donor came in with a matching grant for 3.5 million, and secondly, there was no guarantee that after we told them what the final number was that they were going to come on board with us in the first place...it seemed almost like too much to ask for. But we set up a conference call in the middle of April 2016 after we had done all our research and taken a Church Health Inventory to get a read on our vitals to talk through our findings with this couple who had graciously followed us this far in the journey. As we began talking on the phone in the church office, we shared the number and asked if they would be open to paying off the current debt of $564,700 as well as coming in with a matching grant for up to 3.5 million dollars. After playing with our guys for a little bit, they told us that they felt led to join us in this campaign. Whew! I was overjoyed when I got off the phone followed by a heavy feeling of being overwhelmed at what was before us. But the miracle was undeniable and if God had gotten us this far, we felt like he would carry us the rest of the way.
That weekend we shared with our body that our debt had been retired and that these Kingdom Donors were going to join us to the tune of a 3.5 million dollar grant as we headed into a Capital Campaign in the Fall of 2016 to raise 3.5 million for a grand total of $7,000,000.00! I think our church felt the same stab of being overjoyed and overwhelmed with us. It was almost more than we could process together as we gloried in the provision and wrestled with the reality of the vision moving forward.
During this time frame, we planted a couple more churches in Eagle, MI and Grand Ledge, MI keeping our hearts hot on the trail of multiplication. We didn't want to get tunnel-visioned with the building campaign and lose our ultimate mission of disciple-making and church-planting...which is easy to do since a campaign of this magnitude can be all-consuming for a staff and a church. Thankfully, we had stayed so entrenched in our DNA that we could concurrently be a part of the expansive movement of God in church multiplication while staying excited by the explosive movement of God in church growth! What a blessing to have great leaders in a great church that live so devoted to the mission of God at all costs!
In the Fall of 2016 we began the extensive 3-month campaign strategy filled with one-on-one conversations, desert nights, ministry leader rallies, town hall meetings, question and answer gatherings, a Park Party to inform the Lowell Community, the 5-week "Through the Roof" series on Mark 2, a Worship and Prayer Night to consecrate this project to God, a desert night for the key leaders to "go first" in making our financial commitments, and then the final two weeks of sacrificial giving at the end of October. When all was said and done, we had raised almost 2.6 million in one-time gifts and pledges as a church body for our "Through the Roof" campaign which exceeded our consultants expectation of 1.8 to 2 million based on our body's demographic numbers. Our donors wired over the first matching grant of 2.6 million and gave us one year to raise the other $900,000 to receive the grant in full. God had answered our prayers and His people had responded with extraordinary sacrifice. Though we weren't all the way there, we were well on our way. It gave us confidence to move forward with the plans and to trust God to provide the addition funds as we went.
I can't go into all the details of each part of the journey, but the original land we were looking at across the street fell through after 9 months of thinking it was a done deal according to the owner's stated desire. But right as that fell through, the land across from Meijer owned by Noon Tires opened up and Ryan just so happened to stop in early one weekday morning to find out that it had just come available due to a failed purchase agreement. We put in an offer and they eventually reduced the price to the point we could make a deal. The land was perfect and though the price was more than we had planned when were were thinking of building across from our current church facility, it was clear that this is exactly where God wanted us to be in the community. Our church and community were both excited for this development.
Though we were hoping to build in the Spring of 2017, we ran into some snags with the Lowell township and what was supposed to be a couple little speed bumps turned into almost a 16-month delay. We had started a Campus at Cherry Creek Elementary School in January of 2017 with the thought that we would only need people to commit to it for a year and a half. We wanted to prepare to keep growing as we were building and this was the only way for us to do that. But with the delay, it stretched out our timeline moving into October of 2017 and our year-long matching grant campaign where we were going to try and raise the additional $900,000 for the matching grant that ended on October 31st at midnight. We had another round of one-on-ones, information meetings, dessert nights, and a mini-series "Through the Roof :: Matchpoint" concluding with an opportunity to give a one-time gift and pledge. I was receiving calls and texts right up to midnight on October 31st with commitments and on top of that, nearly $20,000 was given to Ryan at the Trunk-or-Treat community event that we held at the church that Tuesday night. After it had all been tallied up we received over 1.1 million dollars in the Matchpoint Campaign putting our final number raised to well over 3.6 million dollars. Our kingdom donors sent over the remaining $900,000 and we continued forward with plans and designs and dreams even though the land was proving to be a bear to get approved.
To spare you the drama, I won't go into the battles that were waged with the Township to finally get their approval, but in March of 2018 it finally came through and by the end of the month, excavators were already breaking ground and making preparations for all that we've experienced in the past 7 months. The foundation is laid, the walls are up, the steel is in place, the cement is being poured, the electric and plumbing is being installed and the estimated date of occupancy is early in the Summer of 2019. We couldn't be more pumped!
We are currently in the middle of the part of the campaign called "Homestretch" where we are encouraging as many of our attenders as possible to attend the Cherry Creek Campus so that guests have a place to come and meet Jesus. We are also in a "Homestretch" of fund-raising since the delay in the project and the change in location meant the costs changed a bit. We weren't initially going to build the building with a Student Center since we were going to keep our new facility, so we had to add about a $560,000 space to the blueprints. The land was about $400,000 more than the agricultural land across the street and the cost of construction, because of supply and demand in 2018 compared to 2016, is considerably higher. We trust God in all of these delays and detours because we believe ultimately that none of those things were surprises for him like they were to us.
This coming weekend and into the next month we are giving people an opportunity to give to the "Through the Roof: Homestretch" part of the campaign to raise the additional money needed and to become a part of this miracle with many who have already made sacrificial commitments to see this vision backed with provision. We trust that God will move in many hearts as we lean forward by faith into the future God has in store for us.
So on this 15th Anniversary, I thought I'd take some time to put together an abbreviated short story (if you can believe it) of the movement of God in our midst since 2003. We are excited about our past, but we are ecstatic about our future. If you can believe it, while we are currently in the middle of raising vision and funds for our new facility, three new church plants were launched in the month of September...1) "Thrive" in Charlotte, MI, 2) "The Mix" in Lansing, MI, and 3) "The Oaks" in Goose Creek, SC. As we grow locally and reach the un- and de-churched with the love of Jesus, we are also growing all across the globe as we invest in church multiplication with 10% of all of tithes and offerings. You can't outgive God, and it's been amazing to see the R.O.I. for all that we as a church have sown into God's kingdom here on earth. As I honor the goodness of our past today telling the story of our history, I still believe our best days are yet to come.
Excited to walk with you in this adventure,
Jason
It cannot be overstated that God brought some good-hearted, stout-hearted people to join the church in its first days who yoked together and turned some serious ground for the kingdom. I don't think I've ever heard of an assembly of souls with such high capacity and humility that came out of the woodwork of Lowell to join this entrepreneurial endeavor. People of different ages with different gifts and different backgrounds twisted together to form a strong rope of revolution.
In the first months, people were joining the team through word of mouth and assuming ownership of the mission as if they themselves were called to plant the church. People who weren't involved in church before or were nominal attenders in their previous church would step into high-stakes involvement within weeks, offering their time and talents and treasures to move the movement forward. When it usually takes years to form solidarity and camaraderie, this fast-forming group latched onto the mission of reaching un- and de-churched people and ran after it with reckless abandon.
It wasn't uncommon for people to spend 20+ hours at the church throughout a given week meeting needs, filling positions, attending meetings, leading programs, and starting ministries that met emerging needs. The Leadership Advisory Team (LAT) would meet every Monday night for the first several years from 6pm to whenever things were talked through, figured out, and celebrated/solved. I've heard of stories of 6-hour meetings going past midnight as the church was growing so rapidly and needed discernment and decisions made in real-time, nimbly and fluidly. There wasn't time for months to transpire, guarding the mission and guiding the vision required constant hands-on leadership. I'm so grateful for the many "lives-laid-down" that jump-started the church plant in a season when it could have exploded/imploded under the pressure. So many people stood in the gap and stood at their post even when momentum could have created mayhem. We owe so much to so many who believed in Impact's purpose with all their being...they were radical, ruthless, and relentless in their pursuit of the lost.
It wasn't long before they had to go to two services in their little A-frame facility that was originally built for about 80 people tops. Within 4 months, they launched a second Sunday service and volunteers kicked in to train up more newbies to join the mission...the buzz was palpable. God blessed and people continued to trickle in as word hit the streets that this place was a "grace space", a refreshing alternative to the church many had made up in their minds over the years. There was laughter, games, forced community, down-to-earth messages, vulnerability, and above all, love. Lots and lots of love that pulsated and permeated the whole property and beyond.
After a year, there was a desire to start a third service on a Saturday Night to accommodate the growth. The need for room was apparent, so it wasn't long before a Saturday Night expression was launched without a KidZone option, due to the lack of adults to run another program on a completely different night. You couldn't simply attend a service and serve a service as was common for the two Sunday morning services. The addition of the Saturday Night service started with 60 people, but after about 5 months it was down to 12-15 people heading into the volatility of summer. The decision was made to put it into a coma and relaunch it in the fall with a different philosophy and a full children's ministry. With a new vision cast and new crop of volunteers recruited, we gave it another shot. Failure was never seen as fatal, in fact, it was celebrated as an attempt to accomplish great things, God things. Ever since the relaunch, we've never looked back. The Saturday Night service to this day is a vibrant part of our church's culture...but it took at least 5 years to establish a vibrancy and vitality that was healthy and sustainable. I'm so glad people didn't give up when the "going got tough"...so much is owed to the servant-souls that bled for the dream of a Saturday Night expression of church.
But our church wasn't started to just get bigger in Lowell, the vision was to be a church that planted churches that planted churches. So we did something beyond crazy in 2006...we decided to plant our first church in Portland, MI all the while starting a building campaign to build a new worship space and cafe' right in Lowell. It's important to mention that we were barely making budget at the time, just so that you know were weren't rolling around in the dough. This was the kind of risk that existed in this young body that was exceptional and borderline ridiculous. There were lots of questions and hesitations, but the leadership felt strongly that God didn't want us to get used to the comfort of our current situation, but to keep pressing out to reach the un- and de-churched in Lowell and in neighboring communities. So we brought in our first church planter as a resident while we rallied the church to build an $800,000 addition so that we could multiply regionally and grow locally simultaneously. To make a long story short, we launched our first church plant, Epic, and 300 people raised nearly $450,000 to begin to build the new facility that we finally occupied in March of 2017. To say that finances were tight would be the understatement of the century, but God would show up and provide almost like Elijah and the ravens...he gave us our daily bread as he promises to do.
By the time we occupied the building, we continued to grow even as we sent people out to plant Epic. Multiplying didn't impair us, it empowered us, and led to our next church plant which launched in 2017 in Belding, MI with a couple who had come to know Christ at Impact in the first month of its existence. I remember there were several people who thought we were nuts to keep multiplying while were were trying to mature and become healthy as a local body, but we were convinced that multiplying had to be as natural as breathing for people to understand the non-negotiable mandate to go a make disciples and to move to the rhythm of Acts 1:8..."From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and into the ends of the earth." This vision fueled our faith...and so we kept stepping out with risk anchored in trust. It resulted in our second church plant in two years making good on the statement we would often share in front of the body that we wanted to "plant 3 in 5 years and 10 in 10 years". We had planted three in the first 5 years of our existence and now it was onto 10 in 10.
Our church had begun to fill up our space and it was our heart to hive off 80-100 people to plant within our community with a different location and a little different focus on families and students. Within a year of our Belding plant, we raised up a leader within our own body and a team formed to start another church in our own little town of Lowell. Ignite launched with about 150 people and though Impact took a hit with our own numbers, it was amazing to watch how God miraculously filled in the gaps with those who were sent out on mission for the expansion of the kingdom. It's been said that a healthy church isn't known for its "seating capacity", it's know for its "sending capacity". This belief galvanized us to keep stretching for more multiplication even as we often struggled to keep Impact afloat with the essential resources of volunteers and finances. It was this pinch that would keep us leaning into God for his unfailing provision to backfill our unrelenting vision. We believed that vision would produce provision. We wouldn't wait for provision before moving forward with the vision...this was a distinctive that as I look back was the unique attribute that drove our church to do the improbable and even the impossible in certain seasons.
Just as things were beginning to accelerate holistically, we had the 2008 economic crash which proved to be a jarring reality in our journey. Numbers were dropping all over the place and resources were drying up as we continued to forge forward in our vision. Against all odds, we planted another church in St. John's during this time, but the effects of this sustained battery on people's budgets tricked over into the church's resources...the ship was taking on water.
It came to a point in the summer of 2009 that we needed to do a special offering called "Miracle May" to backfill the losses and to keep the ship afloat, and man, oh, man did people gave "above and beyond" to support the church and the struggling church plants with funding needed to sustain the great things that God was doing! However, even a year later we were bleeding financially, enough to have an all-church "Save Bruce" (our Executive Pastor at the time) campaign since we were going to have to cut his position on top of all the 10% pay-cuts our staff was taking. It was powerful to watch the church rally to the occasion and raise $70,000 (13,000 of it through a lawn sale where people were selling their possessions to raise funds) to help pay our bills and to keep our staff in order to sustain the numerical growth of our church. That was the amazing thing, we were growing externally and declining internally simultaneously. God was saving lives as we were simply try to stay alive and keep solvent in this season of recession and depression that many folks were facing.
Still we continued to plant churches, giving 10% of our tithes and offerings to church planting (called at the time, the Nitrogen Network) even in seasons of drought at Impact. It was so embedded in our DNA that we would rather take pay-cuts and lose staff than reduce our 10% contribution to multiplication. It was this radical stance that kept us on mission even in times of great financial famine. We planted churches in Saranac as well as the east side of the state near Detroit while we were thinking strategically about how to deepen our church's health while managing the breadth of ongoing growth we were experiencing as a body. The pressure to retreat from the vision was ever-present, but our leadership was deeply devoted to the original mission of Impact regardless of circumstance. From the outside, it seemed foolish, but on the inside, it was driven by abiding faith.
As we continued to obey God in sacrificial ways, we experienced a season of depth and growth in the Fall of 2011 through a series on the book of Nehemiah. There was something that occurred in that time in our church's history that developed a framework of strength internally and infra-structurally that is still felt to this day. Giving grew by 25% even though the attendance remained the same...disciples were being made as obedience trumped convenience, and generosity eclipsed comfort. Life groups tripled in size in that season and our community began to be anchored in the Word as we followed up the Nehemiah series with a series called "People of the Second Chance" where we collectively read through the whole New Testament as a church and talked about it in Life Groups. The stories of life-change were happening faster than we could capture them and our body was maturing from the toddler phase into the adolescent stage. It wasn't full-on maturity, but it was a giant leap of growth in a short period of time.
In the summer of that same year, we partnered with Swaziland, Africa and began Global Impact, a ministry dedicated to taking care of orphans and widows in the remote regions of Nsogo, Swaziland. Our church has expanded our partnership with Swaziland ever since, adopting a Care Point, selling Timbali crafts made by the widows to generate income for their families, and starting 7 churches in the last 5 years in an effort to be the holistic presence of Jesus in that part of the world. It's so exciting to see our church take Mission's Trips each year and to deepen our relationship with the emerging leaders of Swaziland who are leading the church and their nation towards spiritual revival and renewal. Impact's impact was expanding beyond our borders to the world...a dream that we had envisioned for such a long time.
In time, our church grew beyond our capacity once again, and the new facility that was built in 2007 was busting out at the seams requiring us to dream again of how to "make more room for God to move". We decided to put an expansion on the church that would cost $700,000 and to try and raise 1.4 million to also retire the nearly $700,000 we still carried as a mortgage on our current facility. In 2014 we had a campaign called the "Sacrificial Summit" and after much vision-casting we raised just over 1 million dollars in one-time gifts and 3-year pledges and started building just months later. Within 4 months we raised the money and built the expansion that we occupied in March of 2015 after holding services for 5 weeks at the Lowell Arts Performing Center at the High School. We left our facility with about 900 people and when we returned to the expanded worship space, new lobby, and renovated KidZone 5 weeks later, we started with over 1,100+ on our first week. It was so exciting to see God moving so quickly and clearly in our midst.
It was at the end of 2015 that I could sense that we needed to cast another vision for what to do next. Our church was averaging nearly 1,200 people and the recent expansion was already reaching it's limitations as our parking, KidZone, and worship space were maxed out especially in the fall/winter/spring seasons. It was somewhat discouraging that no sooner did we occupy the new digs that we were having to reimagine our future plans to accommodate the new growth at Impact.
While we were growing at Impact, we were still planting churches more rapidly than ever, we had planted in Ionia, the Prison, and down in West Virginia expanding the church planting network by the year (The network was now called The Greenhouse Network). It seemed like the more we gave away and reproduced, the more we received and grew at our Lowell location as the mother-church of all these church plants. We were up to 17 churches by this time with a new vision of planting 25 churches by the year 2025. The frustration of planting and growing was forcing us to dream up new ideas of reproduction.
In the fall/early winter of 2015 I remember taking some classes on campusing and wondered if we could grow locally by dividing into regional campuses. I went with our teams to various locations and though some would seem promising at first, in time the doors would close for a myriad of reasons. We even looked into possibly purchasing the neighboring doctor's office to build a Community Center that could function as an onsite venue where we could run another concurrent service. But after doing research and realizing that the timing wasn't working out for that transaction, we were left with dead end after dead end. I remember talking with our staff in November of 2015 and feeling so tired and defeated after investing so much time in the next idea and having nothing to show for it. Honestly, it was the first time that I remember chasing after something and not catching it...pursing something and it not coming to fruition. It was a new feeling at Impact where we were so used to having an idea and seeing it rapidly come true. In December, I remember a feeling of exhaustion and exasperation heading into Christmas vacation without a vision for what to do next. I had people asking me, both leaders and attenders: "We're outgrowing this, what's the plan?" I couldn't see anything and I was so used to foresight and forecasting...but I had no other answer other than: "We are waiting on God...it's not clear right now."
I returned from vacation on January 2nd somewhat listless and aimless. I knew how to do the week in and week out ministry at Impact, but I hadn't a clue as to where to go next. I knew that we still had about $600,000 in debt that we were currently aggressively paying down with our Campaign Pledges, but the least of my concerns at this point was debt retirement...I needed a clear vision from God as to what to do next...and it couldn't be a little bandaid, that much I knew. I didn't want to keep building little additions only to outgrow them in a matter of months. It had me all kinds of twisted up inside.
But that same day, January 2nd, right after a morning of meeting to get back in the saddle after Christmas and New Year, I received a voice text at 2:36pm. This voice text would prove to be the most life-altering, mind-blowing, vision-fueling communication from God that one could ever ask for or imagine possible. I just remember this woman from our church leaving a message saying that she had visited her parents over the holidays and they said that they started a foundation where they wanted to pay off the debt of 2 churches a year. She told them about our church and they were interested and wondered if we could fly down to Florida where they lived to talk about our church'w vision and our current debt load. I listen to the voice mail and immediately told Ryan, my Executive Pastor, about it half wondering if it was real or just too good to be true.
To make a long story short, Ryan and I were on this Kingdom donor's private jet in less than two weeks flying down to Florida to visit them about our situation. We stayed there for a couple days getting to know their story and then on the final evening we sat down in their den and talked through our current debt situation. They were very interested in paying off our debt but kept pressing in about our growth and what we were going to do moving forward. Instead of answering them, I turned the question back to them as someone advised me to do a week earlier, "What do you think we need to do given the circumstances?" Being the visionaries they were, they said almost immediately, "It sounds like you need to build a new building. You need to dream big. You're currently landlocked on a 2.7 acre lot and couldn't grow if you wanted to. How much do you think a new facility would cost?"
I didn't have a clue as to what the answer was to that question, but I remember throwing out the number 4 million and watching him wincing a tad. He looked at us and said, "I think it's going to be more than that, in my opinion. I think you guys should go back and get a Needs Analysis to find out specifically what you need and how much it would cost." I swallowed hard and asked a question that felt like I was putting the whole conversation in jeopardy, but I sensed I needed to have the courage to go there.
"If we start pursuing a new facility, there is no way our church can even pursue a 4 million dollar facility let alone something pricier than that. Would you guys be willing to give us a matching grant for up to half of the cost of the new facility in addition to paying off our debt? If God has just put it on your heart to pay off our debt, we are more than grateful, but if we are going to spend time chasing after this dream, we would need help to get there living where we live in a church that already is only two years into the last building campaign for 1.4 million and struggling to raise even 1 million. I know that's not what your vision is for paying off debt for 2 churches a year is, but is that something you would be open to moving forward with us together?" They didn't give a definite answer, but implied that they would be open to considering that as we moved forward with more specific research and real numbers.
So off we went. We got home and aggressively pursued a Needs Analysis that measured some metrics that had to do mainly with parking capacity, worship seating capacity, and Kidzone capacity. After having the consultant crunch the numbers, they came back with specs on what we would need for at least a 10-year plan...7 million dollars. Gulp.
I remember hearing that number and feeling the blood freeze in my veins. For one, I didn't think we could raise 3.5 million even if the Kingdom Donor came in with a matching grant for 3.5 million, and secondly, there was no guarantee that after we told them what the final number was that they were going to come on board with us in the first place...it seemed almost like too much to ask for. But we set up a conference call in the middle of April 2016 after we had done all our research and taken a Church Health Inventory to get a read on our vitals to talk through our findings with this couple who had graciously followed us this far in the journey. As we began talking on the phone in the church office, we shared the number and asked if they would be open to paying off the current debt of $564,700 as well as coming in with a matching grant for up to 3.5 million dollars. After playing with our guys for a little bit, they told us that they felt led to join us in this campaign. Whew! I was overjoyed when I got off the phone followed by a heavy feeling of being overwhelmed at what was before us. But the miracle was undeniable and if God had gotten us this far, we felt like he would carry us the rest of the way.
That weekend we shared with our body that our debt had been retired and that these Kingdom Donors were going to join us to the tune of a 3.5 million dollar grant as we headed into a Capital Campaign in the Fall of 2016 to raise 3.5 million for a grand total of $7,000,000.00! I think our church felt the same stab of being overjoyed and overwhelmed with us. It was almost more than we could process together as we gloried in the provision and wrestled with the reality of the vision moving forward.
During this time frame, we planted a couple more churches in Eagle, MI and Grand Ledge, MI keeping our hearts hot on the trail of multiplication. We didn't want to get tunnel-visioned with the building campaign and lose our ultimate mission of disciple-making and church-planting...which is easy to do since a campaign of this magnitude can be all-consuming for a staff and a church. Thankfully, we had stayed so entrenched in our DNA that we could concurrently be a part of the expansive movement of God in church multiplication while staying excited by the explosive movement of God in church growth! What a blessing to have great leaders in a great church that live so devoted to the mission of God at all costs!
In the Fall of 2016 we began the extensive 3-month campaign strategy filled with one-on-one conversations, desert nights, ministry leader rallies, town hall meetings, question and answer gatherings, a Park Party to inform the Lowell Community, the 5-week "Through the Roof" series on Mark 2, a Worship and Prayer Night to consecrate this project to God, a desert night for the key leaders to "go first" in making our financial commitments, and then the final two weeks of sacrificial giving at the end of October. When all was said and done, we had raised almost 2.6 million in one-time gifts and pledges as a church body for our "Through the Roof" campaign which exceeded our consultants expectation of 1.8 to 2 million based on our body's demographic numbers. Our donors wired over the first matching grant of 2.6 million and gave us one year to raise the other $900,000 to receive the grant in full. God had answered our prayers and His people had responded with extraordinary sacrifice. Though we weren't all the way there, we were well on our way. It gave us confidence to move forward with the plans and to trust God to provide the addition funds as we went.
I can't go into all the details of each part of the journey, but the original land we were looking at across the street fell through after 9 months of thinking it was a done deal according to the owner's stated desire. But right as that fell through, the land across from Meijer owned by Noon Tires opened up and Ryan just so happened to stop in early one weekday morning to find out that it had just come available due to a failed purchase agreement. We put in an offer and they eventually reduced the price to the point we could make a deal. The land was perfect and though the price was more than we had planned when were were thinking of building across from our current church facility, it was clear that this is exactly where God wanted us to be in the community. Our church and community were both excited for this development.
Though we were hoping to build in the Spring of 2017, we ran into some snags with the Lowell township and what was supposed to be a couple little speed bumps turned into almost a 16-month delay. We had started a Campus at Cherry Creek Elementary School in January of 2017 with the thought that we would only need people to commit to it for a year and a half. We wanted to prepare to keep growing as we were building and this was the only way for us to do that. But with the delay, it stretched out our timeline moving into October of 2017 and our year-long matching grant campaign where we were going to try and raise the additional $900,000 for the matching grant that ended on October 31st at midnight. We had another round of one-on-ones, information meetings, dessert nights, and a mini-series "Through the Roof :: Matchpoint" concluding with an opportunity to give a one-time gift and pledge. I was receiving calls and texts right up to midnight on October 31st with commitments and on top of that, nearly $20,000 was given to Ryan at the Trunk-or-Treat community event that we held at the church that Tuesday night. After it had all been tallied up we received over 1.1 million dollars in the Matchpoint Campaign putting our final number raised to well over 3.6 million dollars. Our kingdom donors sent over the remaining $900,000 and we continued forward with plans and designs and dreams even though the land was proving to be a bear to get approved.
To spare you the drama, I won't go into the battles that were waged with the Township to finally get their approval, but in March of 2018 it finally came through and by the end of the month, excavators were already breaking ground and making preparations for all that we've experienced in the past 7 months. The foundation is laid, the walls are up, the steel is in place, the cement is being poured, the electric and plumbing is being installed and the estimated date of occupancy is early in the Summer of 2019. We couldn't be more pumped!
We are currently in the middle of the part of the campaign called "Homestretch" where we are encouraging as many of our attenders as possible to attend the Cherry Creek Campus so that guests have a place to come and meet Jesus. We are also in a "Homestretch" of fund-raising since the delay in the project and the change in location meant the costs changed a bit. We weren't initially going to build the building with a Student Center since we were going to keep our new facility, so we had to add about a $560,000 space to the blueprints. The land was about $400,000 more than the agricultural land across the street and the cost of construction, because of supply and demand in 2018 compared to 2016, is considerably higher. We trust God in all of these delays and detours because we believe ultimately that none of those things were surprises for him like they were to us.
This coming weekend and into the next month we are giving people an opportunity to give to the "Through the Roof: Homestretch" part of the campaign to raise the additional money needed and to become a part of this miracle with many who have already made sacrificial commitments to see this vision backed with provision. We trust that God will move in many hearts as we lean forward by faith into the future God has in store for us.
So on this 15th Anniversary, I thought I'd take some time to put together an abbreviated short story (if you can believe it) of the movement of God in our midst since 2003. We are excited about our past, but we are ecstatic about our future. If you can believe it, while we are currently in the middle of raising vision and funds for our new facility, three new church plants were launched in the month of September...1) "Thrive" in Charlotte, MI, 2) "The Mix" in Lansing, MI, and 3) "The Oaks" in Goose Creek, SC. As we grow locally and reach the un- and de-churched with the love of Jesus, we are also growing all across the globe as we invest in church multiplication with 10% of all of tithes and offerings. You can't outgive God, and it's been amazing to see the R.O.I. for all that we as a church have sown into God's kingdom here on earth. As I honor the goodness of our past today telling the story of our history, I still believe our best days are yet to come.
Excited to walk with you in this adventure,
Jason
Comments
Post a Comment