A few weeks ago I posted The Miracle on Main. In that post I referenced our first building miracle. Jeff asked me about that story. So here's an excerpt from Church of the King history 101.
I moved back to Metro Detroit in May, 2001 after finishing my senior year at CBC. 5 of my friends from school joined me in June. The six of us fanned out across neighborhoods in Southfield five days a week and began building relationships with people. We started a Thursday night core group meeting. Meanwhile we hosted 4 different community events to begin assimilating people. At the end of the summer we had a core group of about 25.
On September 16 (the Sunday after 9.11) we had our Grand Opening Service in the cafetorium of Thompson Middle School. After launching we doubled to 50.
We were spending $3,500.00 a month to rent the school on Sundays. In October I began looking for a place to start some leadership training. Meanwhile, God gave me a relationship with the pastor of a church about two miles from our building. They were not using their building during the week, so he offered for us to use it on Wednesday evenings to train leaders.
A few months later he called me and asked if I'd stop by his office. He greeted me with a question. "If you could have anything for the church right now what would it be?" I listed off some needs that I thought his church could afford. He responded by making my jaw drop. "How about a building?"
My friend's passion was to give his church full time ministry (which they had not been able to afford). He saw our biggest need as a facility need. The dream God had given him was to give us their building. He shared that vision with his church and together they decided to deed almost one million dollars worth of assets over to Church of the King. It was kingdom-minded and unselfish. It was a financial breakthrough for us. It was a staff breakthrough for us. The money we saved from renting the school put us in position to hire Tal and Gwen Sullivan, a fantastic couple with 3 kids. They brought much needed balance to our leadership team. Up until that point there were four of us on staff. None of us were old enough to drive a church van!
This is our Miracle on 12 Mile Rd.
This Sunday our first daughter church will launch in downtown Royal Oak. We would not have been able to plant The Oaks so quickly without the building miracle. Now with our first church plant we've added The Miracle on Main.
We're facing space challenges now, but asking the question "Where to next?" is easy to do when your short 4.5 year history is filled with miracle stamps of God's provision.
2 facility miracles down.
98 more to go!
Wow, talk about God's favor. What an awesome blessing. It builds up my faith to hear this stuff. We need it right now as our future is clouded by uncertainty concerning teaching and a possible move a couple states away. Thanks, bro, I appreciate what you do. God bless.
Posted by: jeff | April 13, 2006 at 09:37 PM