Building for Ministry

DNA of EVBCAudio2004

Dec 12

Tom Shrader walks the congregation through the full history of East Valley Bible Church's building plans, explaining how growth, changing demographics, and rising construction costs led to a completely redesigned campus master plan. He details the new proposal—featuring a 1,500-seat worship center, an 18,000-square-foot commons area, a student building, and a new children's center—and explains how the church arrived at a $3.5 million fundraising goal. Drawing on giving data and his own pastoral honesty, he urges every member to participate sacrificially, framing generous giving not as a building project but as an act of spiritual obedience and stewardship.

“Buildings are really important as a tool to facilitate numerical growth, because that facilitates spiritual growth and influence.”
— Tom Shrader

Series: DNA of EVBC

Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 55 min

Themes: giving, stewardship, generosity, sacrifice, church growth, vision, community outreach, building, church member deciding whether to give, family evaluating financial commitment, new church member, long-time member, parent invested in children's ministry, volunteer in outreach, young adult learning generosity, struggling with sacrificial giving

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 8

Theological Themes: stewardship, ecclesiology, spiritual obedience, sanctification, missional giving, church mission, biblical generosity, body of christ

Full Transcript

Welcome and Community Announcements

Good morning. Great to see you here this morning. Please grab the bulletin — we have a little bit of work to do. The response tab in the bulletin is designed to detach. If you are with us for the first time, we would ask you to take a moment and complete the registration portion of that card in its entirety, then drop it in one of the boxes as you leave. If you are here on a regular basis and there has been an address change, email change, or any other update, please let us know so we can update our files. Simply complete the card and drop it in one of the boxes as you leave.

The Third Annual Toy Sale

Yesterday we had the absolute privilege of being part of the third annual toy sale. This is a joint effort with our Latino church, Ponte Vita, and a couple of other churches. You donated 2,400 toys last week, including 49 bicycles, and people started lining up at 2 a.m. to buy these gifts. It was amazing.

We had the opportunity to share the gospel with hundreds of people. There was music and opportunity to talk about Jesus and who He is. There were 266 families that we invited back to Ponte Vita, and hundreds more were invited to other churches as well. We raised over $4,000 that will stay right there in that community.

Thirty-five members of the college team came together and were truly the driving force behind the organization of this event. Twenty-five students from high school and junior high were involved, along with ten people from community ministries and four local churches. We even had the opportunity to speak with four policemen who showed up after neighbors called to ask what was going on at 2 o'clock in the morning — and so we had an opportunity to share with them about Jesus and His love for all of us.

We went through 176 rolls of wrapping paper, and you brought roughly 3,000 toys over the last couple of weeks for this sale and for Angel Tree as well. You made that possible, and I want to thank you all for it. I honestly believe there is a real momentum building for us to do something even more dramatic — not just the toy sale, but so many other things that relate to community ministries. Thank you so much for your involvement.

Upcoming Opportunities

A couple of other things are worth highlighting in the bulletin. You now have the opportunity to sign up online for institute classes, which begin on January 16th. In-person registration begins January 2nd, but you can begin registering online today. As you work through the bulletin, you will also see opportunities in men's ministry — you can register online for the men's conference as well.

As you leave today, we are encouraging you to stop by the boxes and pick up invitations to the Christmas Eve services. Services are at 12, 1:30, 4:30, and 6. This is different from what we have done in the past. In previous years we distributed tickets to spread attendance evenly throughout the day, but this year we are going back to our roots and giving you the opportunity to invite your friends directly. There should be stacks of invitations on the boxes; if not, they are available in the lobby.

Please take the time to pick these up — you will need them with you this week. The back of the invitation is blank so you can write your contact information as you meet people, so they can reach you by email or phone and you can meet them here at church. On those days we will also be running video into the conference room. We have no idea how attendance will be distributed across the five services, so if sitting in the worship center is important to you, plan to arrive very early.

We also need volunteers to help with Christmas Eve and children's ministries. There is a great tradition of serving one hour in children's ministry and then coming into the worship center together as a family. If that is not already a family tradition for you, we encourage you to start it this year. There is not a lot of training required for that night — it is simply helping the kids have fun, and we will provide all the tools you need. There is also another way to support short-term missions through world ministries, and you will find that information in the bulletin as well.

Introduction and Context

There is some coffee available out in the courtyard, and all the proceeds go to fund short-term missions. So if you are a coffee drinker, take advantage of that. There is a great story that goes with the coffee and where it comes from, so pick that up on your way out.

We are going to do something very different this morning. If you have been around for a while, you have never seen us do anything like this. If you are here for the very first time, you are going to see something a little different for us.

Let me give you the genesis of this. We have had a series of meetings to talk about the buildings, and in the course of those meetings, as people were leaving, they were saying, "When you communicate to us in the bulletin, you have to add a couple of sentences to explain these numbers." That is impossible — there are not two sentences to explain these numbers.

My intention was to take five minutes today and talk about the building project, the building itself, how to pay for it, and all that goes with it. But as I sat down, that proved impossible. At the end of five minutes, I felt I had raised more questions than I answered.

So I talked to some of the staff, some building committee members, and some people who had been in those meetings, and I asked what they would think if I took a Sunday and talked this through. Universally — especially among those who had been in the meetings — they said it was really important, because a lot of people could not get to the meetings, and frankly, even those who had attended needed to digest it and hear it again. So with that counsel, I decided we would take this morning and talk about the new building project.

Scope and Purpose of This Presentation

I understand there is a little bit of risk in that, and I know some of you have heard some of this before. But I still think it is really important for us to go through it together. Let me warn you up front that this presentation is incomplete. Those meetings ran two hours and twenty minutes, and I spoke about half the time while the architect, Jack DeBartolo, spoke the other half. Jack does not have a presence here this morning, so what I am giving you is about twenty-five percent of what we covered.

I cannot talk with you in depth about the buildings themselves, though I will share the master plan. Jack is over in the conference center right now, and if you call him at the office, he would love to talk to you about it in detail. But I think I can do a pretty good job of getting us all on the same page.

It is a little difficult to frame this discussion because I have to talk about a building project that actually began five years ago. It was over five years ago that we started wrestling with the idea of building on this campus, and it was three years ago that we came to you and said, "Here is our solution to what we see." So I want you to be patient. I am going to try to be as thorough as I can, and I will probably be repetitious — and that is okay, because it is important that we communicate clearly.

Two Driving Questions

This is my third building project in conjunction with this church, and what I have discovered is that there are essentially two issues people are concerned about. Number one: what are you going to build, why are you going to build it, and all that goes with it. Number two: how are you going to pay for it? Those are the two driving issues.

What I have done this morning is divide this presentation to address those two points — first, what are we going to build, and second, how are we going to pay for it. I have also sprinkled some history about East Valley Bible Church throughout, because I think one of the things I do not do very well is keep our history in front of us. We are pretty good at saying here is where we are going and here is what we want to do, but it is equally important to remember where we have been. So I am going to blend all of that together and invite you to hang on as we work our way through it.

Looking Back: The 2001 Presentation

Three years ago we came to you and talked about a building project. As I spoke with people, I found they had various ideas and various memories of what that was all about. So I thought the best thing to do was to go back and actually look at the PowerPoint we used in those meetings.

Here is the PowerPoint from October 2001 — the one we used when we asked, "Why are we even having this discussion, and what are we going to build?" And here are the numbers we gave you, beginning in September of 1997, right before and right as we moved into this building.

Look at the growth reflected in those numbers. I have removed the summers and holidays to give you a fair, one-for-one comparison. In September of 1997 we had 652 people, and by September of 1998 we had 2,259 people. That is extraordinary — 350% growth in a single year. From 1998 to 1999 we saw growth of about 700 people. From 1999 to 2000, growth of about 900 people. From September —

A Season of Growth

From 2000 to October of 2001, we saw growth of around 500 people. If you put it on a chart, the dark line representing the combined children's ministry and worship attendance goes off the charts when you really look at it. It was at that point in 2001 that we said we have to do something. We have to address this issue. The physical plant was beginning to be maxed out.

Here is what a typical Sunday looked like in terms of how we used the space. We had five services, about 2,900 in worship, 950 kids, and 430 in student ministries. Neil came in a couple of months ago and showed me a memo I had written in November of 1998 — six years ago — saying we had met and we needed to build. We needed to deal with this. We had people coming and we were running out of physical space to minister to them.

We were at five services and could go to six, but pretty soon we would be out of space entirely. And I want to be clear: I am not talking about just numerical growth. Numerical growth is easy to measure. I am talking about spiritual growth — families that were changed, people coming to Christ, marriages that God was putting back together, and children being transformed.

I see this now in children who have been in our children's ministries for ten or eleven years. When we start talking about the doctrines of grace, they are not out there fighting or arguing. This is all they know. They see the Arminian view as an aberration. So God has been very good to us, not just numerically, but spiritually as well.

The Plan Takes Shape

We sat down together and said, let's come up with a plan. This planning process started five years ago. On the left side of the screen is Elliot, the right side is north, and you can see William Dillard Drive. On the extreme left are what we call the existing buildings — the worship center we are in now and the classrooms you walk past on the way to the courtyard.

What we proposed in October of 2001 was a phase one and a phase two. Phase one included three components: the wrap, which are the new classrooms many of you have enjoyed; the office building; and the conference center. What we wanted more than anything was worship space, but we could not build worship space without the support rooms we needed first.

So we had to flip the order. The worship center would have to wait because we could not build it without the children's ministry space in place first. We came to you as a package and said, here is what we think this is going to cost. We will phase these logically, hold the worship center until the end, and our hope is to get it all done at once.

Designing the Worship Center

The worship center was designed to accommodate about 2,500 people. On the left side of the design you can see some canopies adjacent to a cafe bookstore area. Moving across the front of the worship center, there is a lobby area with space for distribution, information, and so on. On the right side there was a nursery area designed to house the smallest children.

Out in the courtyard you see what look like flying V shapes — almost like a spaceship. That was a roughly 5,000-square-foot shaded area intended for information booths, sign-ins, and all of that. We moved forward with phase one and were comfortable building it. The worship center, however, was postponed pending an economic trigger: we were not going to move forward on the second phase until we had six million dollars in cash.

Three Years of Programming and Change

Once phase one was finished, we turned our full attention to the worship center. We brought the team together — staff, architects, and the construction team — and got to work. We planned it, hardlined it, and developed a solid footprint. Then we began programming the interior, and over the next three years a great deal began to change.

The way I describe it is that the worship center became like a bill going through Congress. We started adding, subtracting, and moving things around. The cafe bookstore evolved away from what we had originally envisioned. The nursery workers — who are the experts — told us they needed to be able to check people in and check people out indoors, inside, because they believed that was the best way to minister to families dropping off their children. But the footprint was already set, so we had to begin making compromises.

We continued working through all of it, incorporating the audiovisual, technical, and production elements the building required. We went to the town, received our building permit, and were ready to go — minus the money, which was still trickling in but getting close. Over those last three or four months, however, every time I sat in one of those meetings, I had a very uneasy feeling, a very uncomfortable feeling.

Rethinking the Building

When I first looked at the building plans, I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me. The more time I spent with it, though, I began to figure out what was going on. In my mind, we were designing the wrong building.

Here is what happened. East Valley Bible Church, over that five-year period of time, changed radically. When we were over on Dobson, and then moved into this building, when our attendance was around 650 to 1,000 people, we were pretty much a single-demographic church. On Dobson, the congregation was largely older adults — if you were 40, you were considered old in that environment — along with a large group of people between 25 and 32 who were typically in their first marriages, raising their biological children together. That was our demographic, and we ministered extraordinarily well to that group. God began to bless that, and as people came, they brought friends who fit the same profile.

When we moved into this building, things began to change. It wasn't just a friend inviting a friend anymore. Because of the size and mass of the facility, we began to show up on the map. In my Getting Plugged In class, when I ask people how they found East Valley Bible Church, I used to hear almost universally, "I was invited by a friend." Now I hear things like, "I was driving by," or "My realtor told me about it." All of a sudden, we had become one of those churches people recommend even when they don't attend themselves.

When that happens, the demographic changes. We had essentially no single people with us when we were on Dobson. Now, every Sunday when I ask first-time visitors to complete a registration form, on a typical week, if twelve people fill one out, six or seven of them are singles. I'm not sure we're doing a very good job ministering to that specific group of people. We also have a lot of blended families, a lot of single moms, and a lot of single dads.

We've been doing a lot of things that worked really well in the previous context, but I think it is time for a philosophy overhaul — in how we minister to the people we now have, how we go out into the community, and how we begin to minister to people on campus. In the middle of all that, I looked at this building and said: we designed a terrific building for who we were and what we were doing in 1997, 1998, and 2001, but that is not who we are in 2004. And my guess is it is not who we are going to be in 2010 or 2020 either.

Stopping to Ask Better Questions

So I went to the team and said we need to stop. Let me tell you something — that was really, really hard to do, and it was hard for them to hear. They asked why, and I couldn't give them great answers. I just said I think we are on the wrong trail, and I think we need to stop and ask some questions. Even if we come back with exactly the same answers, we need to pause and take a fresh look. The building committee, the elders, and the leadership team were extraordinary in their response. They said, "Let's do it." And we did.

That was the point at which we decided to go back to square one. Going back to square one meant re-examining everything, including who we were working with on the architectural side. That is when we invited Jack DiBarlo and his father to join us. Jack and his wife and family attend church here, and he is an extraordinarily gifted man. His father is remarkable as well. When I first met his father, he was picking me up at the airport in Tucson to give me a ride up for a teaching engagement. He had been a principal in a firm of 350 architects — absolutely world class. At some point he decided he did not want to manage architects anymore; he wanted to be an architect. So he started a small firm of just five or six people. In every meeting we have had, a principal has been present.

Evaluating the Site from Scratch

Jack began at square one. He evaluated who we are, and he looked at the site carefully. If you were with us in either of the two earlier meetings, you know that Jack spent a full hour walking through sunlight patterns, wind direction, and all the different orientations available to us. Could we expand to the north, the east, the south, or the west? What were all our options? How could we move things around and reorient the campus? What was truly important to us? He met with staff, leadership, and focus groups, asking what was missing, what was working well, what people liked about what we already had, and what was not functioning.

Jack brought back to us a document called the East Valley Bible Church 2010 Long-Range Plan. It is a booklet about this thick, and it addresses where we are going over the next five to ten years in the form of a specific master plan. Let me take you through it very quickly.

The Master Plan

Here is the site. We are adding what we are calling the wedge, or the landscape feature, and we are opening the property up toward Elliott Road. One of the things that came up over and over again in every conversation was the desire for a more inviting presence along Elliott — something that makes people feel welcome and draws them toward the church. Then there is the commons area. Remember the tents I described that were placed in the middle of the campus? That space was 5,000 square feet. The commons area in this plan is 18,000 square feet.

Now, when I give those dimensions, I want to be clear about what we have actually done at this stage. All we have done is place blocks on the plan. I do not know yet if it will be that exact shape. It may shift from 18,000 to 19,000 square feet, or back down to 17,000. What we are trying to do is place space on paper and begin designing it in our minds so we can get our arms around what it should look like and what it should cost.

Think of the commons area as a student union. Every single person we talked to, when we started discussing the church, said the same thing: there is no place to gather. There is no place to simply hang out. Right now, you get a cup of coffee and lean against a wall.

The Site Plan and Worship Center Design

The café, the bookstore, the commons area, and the worship center form the heart of the new layout. The worship center seats about 1,500 people — roughly 1,000 fewer than the previous design of 2,500. The reason comes down to a core commitment: we are always going to be at least a four-service church, running at least two services in the morning and two at night.

From the beginning, we said we need to have services in tandem. We don't want people who come one hour to either go to church and not serve, or serve and not go to church. When we were back over on Dobson, we couldn't fill the church up, and virtually instantaneously we went to two services for exactly this reason — because you need to serve and worship.

That approach made for some painful moments. I did a worship service one evening during the NBA Finals when the Suns were in it, with 11 people in the room — three of whom were Susan, Sarah, and Haley. Of the other eight, two were wearing earphones, and I don't think they were listening to me. But once we started crunching the numbers, we realized we can be a church of five to six thousand in worship by running two services in the morning and two at night. With 1,500 seats, we are fine, and that allows us to begin to master plan the entire site.

The Student Building, Children's Center, and Remaining Facilities

The next phase of the plan includes a student building for junior high, high school, and college ministries, along with the offices that go with it, and a new children's center. You might be asking: why a new children's center when we just built children's space? There are a couple of things we want to accomplish. The new building will be much more secure, much more user-friendly, and single story.

It will also allow us to create outdoor areas where kids can burn off some energy. It allows parents to park in the Elliott-side lot, disperse their children on the way in, and pick them up on the way out. With the existing classroom space freed up, we can begin to retrofit it to accommodate adult ministries, institute classes, a training center, world ministries, community ministries, and all sorts of other options.

We are also adding a facility building and a small wedge structure out front — something to be named later — that gives us a presence on Elliott. Right now we have the largest sign the city will allow out there, and people are still driving by saying they didn't even know we were there. We think we can do something meaningful with that frontage.

The Existing Worship Center and Long-Term Vision

Every session we have been in, people have asked: what are you going to do with the existing worship center? From the very beginning it was designed to be used primarily for special events — weddings, funerals. Going forward, it could become a video venue. We are limited to 1,500 seats in the new worship center, but with two prime video venues we extend well beyond that capacity.

We looked at retrofitting the existing building for student ministries, but it was very expensive and still compromised the building. The reason we located it out front is that we believe this building will be used extensively by people who are not here on a regular basis, and it is the first building you come into as you enter the property. That makes it a natural point of entry and welcome.

This site plan is radically different from what you saw in October of 2001, and I believe it is infinitely better. It is also a very flexible design. We don't know exactly what this church will look like in 2010, and while a lot of thinking focuses on five to ten years out, I find myself thinking much more in terms of 20 and 25 years. I know I won't be here for that — I'll be gone, and if I am still here, I probably won't know it. So it won't make any difference.

This Is About What God Will Do

This is not about me. This is not even about some of you. This is about what God is going to do in this church in the future. I think that is really important to hold onto.

I have had people ask, "Why aren't you happy with what we have?" I am very happy with what God has done. Two weeks ago I was standing over in my spot waiting to come in and teach, and everyone was singing and standing, and I was blown away looking around thinking that what God has done here is extraordinary. But that might not be all He wants to do.

There is a huge amount of influence still ahead. When we were over on Dobson, that toy sale you saw recently? There was no way that was ever going to happen there. There is no way we could have supported world ministries the way we do now when we were in that building. I have had people say all the time that buildings aren't important. That is someone who doesn't understand what is going on. Buildings are really important as a tool to facilitate numerical growth — and that, in turn, facilitates spiritual growth and influence.

Where We Started: The Original Plan

We are not talking about 900 kids anymore. We are talking about 1,800 kids and 6,000 people. We are not talking about power here. We are talking about influence — the ability to plant other churches, to look at satellite churches, to train people in the training center, and to train men who will go out and infect other churches. God has done something very, very special here. I will tell you, I have fought this for a long time. I have had a lot of people telling me that, and I have resisted it, but I see that God is doing something very different and very special here.

We have an obligation to respond to that. The same principle applies individually and corporately: to whom much is given, much is expected. So there is the building. Now here is the question: how are we going to pay for it, and what is it going to cost?

I need to rewind back three years ago. Here is what we showed you then. We said phase one was going to cost about $4.5 million and phase two about $7.5 million. The RAP office conference center was $4.5 million, the new worship center was $7.5 million — the number to remember is $12 million. That is what we were looking at.

Borrowing or Believing? Finding a Balanced Approach

When we decided to bite off about $12 million, we knew that on each past project we had missed by about 10% — that is just the way it is. So we were looking at a $12 to $13 million project. The plan was to borrow some and raise the balance in cash.

When we moved into this building from Dobson, I had a whole group of people saying to me they would not put a shovel in the ground until they had all the money. Then I had another group saying they would build as much as possible and borrow as much as possible, because God was going to bring more people than we could ever dream. Both groups were coming at me saying the same thing: "If you had enough faith." One side said if you had enough faith you would not put a shovel in the ground until you had all the money. The other side said if you had enough faith you would build the building and wait for God to bring the money. Their disagreement was really about timing.

We got together and said, why don't we do something radical and use our heads? How do we handle resources in our own families? So we said we could borrow about $6 million and raise $6 million in cash.

The Timeline and a Fundamental Error

Here is the exact timeline we gave you three years ago. We planned to start phase one in April of 2002 and be in the building by December of 2002. We did not make that, by the way — we were six or seven months behind. I believe we opened in June of 2003. That was the classrooms, office building, and conference center.

The worship center was a different story. We were not going to start it until we had the $6 million in cash. This is a really important point, and I need you to be with me here. The total was $12 million — $6 million in cash, $6 million in debt. But there was a fundamental error in the presentation we made.

We said that when we got to $6 million in cash, we would start the worship center. We never put a time on it. We never said "$6 million by such and such a date." And here is what happens in that process: inflation, and especially the escalating cost of construction. Buildings have been going up between 20% and 30% in the last three years. So all of a sudden, that $12 million figure could be significantly different — and in fact, it was.

What Phase One Actually Cost

Let me show you the actual costs. Phase one, which we said would cost $4.5 million, came in at $7 million. Now, take a breath, because your reaction is probably the same as mine was: we were not very good at figuring that out. Let me explain.

The building itself cost about $5 million — we were right where we thought. Here is the problem. All the way along, internally, we were using construction numbers as final numbers. That means we had no soft costs included. We had no licenses, no architect's fees, no permits from the town — and we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars there. We also had no FF&E: fixtures, furniture, and equipment. So we were going to have great classroom space with kids sitting on the floor and people drawing on the walls. That is a real problem.

Additionally, once we got into phase one, we decided to take some phase two items and fold them into phase one. Why end the parking lot right here if the asphalt crew is already on site? It was never going to be cheaper to put that parking lot in than at that moment, and we were going to do it anyway. We also went ahead and cut the entrance on McQueen. Anything ultimately related to that project, we were comfortable pulling into phase one.

Beyond that, we realized at that point that we were going to use the conference center for worship. Once we made that decision, we had to upgrade all of the audiovisual. That meant three projectors instead of two, with the last one significantly larger than the others. If you have been in the conference center, you will notice speakers distributed all around it — the sound in there is far better than in this room. In the conference center we can achieve a balanced fill throughout the space, whereas in here the only option is to turn the volume up louder. So we absorbed that cost as well. All of that, we could still handle.

The Worship Center: Costs That Escalated Away From Us

Here is where the real issue arose. The cost of the worship center simply escalated away from us. From that original $7.5 to $8 million estimate, we went to bid and it came back at $12.5 million.

Reassessing the Plan

We value-engineered the project, and when we went back, the cost had already climbed to $14 million. That number was moving away from us. So we did something wise: we stopped. We said we needed to take a better look at this, and we regrouped.

When we paused, that's when we brought Jack on board and went back to square one. We asked whether there were ways to approach this differently — not just to make an existing building less expensive, but to rethink the whole thing. That process is what produced the master plan, which has four or five parts to it.

To build everything on that master plan, we need about $22 million. No one is thinking that is going to happen right now. So we had to stop and ask: what are the most important components?

We met with two focus groups made up of people from the congregation, the staff, elders, and the building committee. We told everyone not to say anything at first — just write down the most important components. Virtually across the board, the answers came back the same: worship center, then commons area.

What It Will Cost

Here is what those two priorities cost to build. The worship center, to build new right now, is $9 million — significantly different from the $14 million we were previously looking at. Part of that difference comes from removing the bookstore and reducing the capacity to 1,500 seats. The commons area comes in at about $2 million, which includes a 5,000-square-foot box at the center along with substantial associated costs.

Those numbers include FF&E, all soft costs, permits, and a construction increase we are allocating based on a two-year building timeline. So these are real, comprehensive figures.

How We Plan to Pay for It

Here is our proposal for how we get this done. We have half a million dollars cash on hand. We need to raise $3.5 million. And we are carrying $7 million in debt.

Now, on the debt side — we have four banks calling us every week ready to write us a check for $11 million. We could have that money tomorrow morning. The catch, of course, is that they want it paid back. But even setting that aside, we have said that level of debt puts us in a place where we are not comfortable.

You may be wondering why we only have $500,000 cash on hand if we raised $6 million. Here is what happened. That first project was projected at $12 million, and the plan was to cover half in debt and half in cash. As the timeline stretched out — a year and a half, two years — we found ourselves with money sitting in the bank earning one and a half percent while borrowing at five and a half or six percent. That makes no sense, and at that point it becomes a stewardship issue. So we paid it down. Every penny ever designated for the building has gone either toward new construction or retiring debt. That is the formula we committed to, and that is what we did.

That leaves us with $500,000 on hand and $3.5 million we believe we need to raise.

A Word from My Heart

I want to take a few minutes and talk to you as honestly as I possibly can. We are going to give you a time frame for raising the $3.5 million — the target date is January 31st, which is about six or seven weeks away.

When I sit down and work through the numbers in these meetings, I find myself thinking: there is no way we are going to raise $3.5 million by January 31st. That is as honest as I can be with you. And I am praying about it. I pray for a lot of things, and one of them is that God would bring in $3.5 million — or more — by that date. I would love to have all $22 million by then. Not because we are trying to build a monument, but because we are dealing with real areas of ministry.

This Is About You, Not Someone Else

In these conversations, I often hear people say things like, "So-and-so could write a check right now and pay for the whole thing." My friend, this is not about figuring out what someone else needs to do. This is about figuring out your own responsibility before God. You do not have a full picture of anyone else's financial situation, and God is not going to judge you by how they handled their money — He is going to judge you by how you handled yours.

This is also not about equal giving. You are not going to be able to give equally, and that is not what I am asking for. I am talking about equal sacrifice. My view — and I want to be as direct as I can — is that if you have a paycheck, you ought to be participating in this. Whether you are working part-time at a Starbucks or running a company as a CEO, you ought to be part of this effort.

Let me show you something in the numbers that I think is really interesting. Looking back at September of 1997...

The Growth Picture

It's September of 1999. Look at that growth chart — remember the charts? Look at the last three years. It went completely flat. I'll put it in a graph so it's even more dramatic. You can see it shoot up, and then you can see it go flat. Why? I examined everything, and I think we were doing everything we were doing before, and doing it even better. I think we were flat out of space. We were simply maximizing what we had.

Here is a Sunday morning slide you saw from October of 2001. Now here is September of this year. I want to lay them side by side. The growth that has taken place has not been in the worship center — that is seven people. And it has not really been in children's ministry either. It has been in student ministry. College has gotten back on board and is building up, and there are simply more students in junior high and high school. That is the issue. That is what is taking place. And you do not feel it when you are here on a Sunday, do you? It feels like it is growing, and it is huge, and it is moving. But these figures are telling you a very accurate picture.

Looking Back to 1994

Do you recognize this? Anyone in the room recognize this? This is what we used in 1994 at Lesson Jerry Taylor's house to talk about moving into this building. We made some presentations, and we did not have PowerPoint. These were overhead slides I was putting together and typing. Then I got excited and found these colored transparencies, so they are hard to read. I was so proud of this.

Here is the attendance from that time — it is hard to read, but we had 297 people. If you were in junior high, you had nine other kids in there with you. It is amazing to see what God has done. Here is what we said we needed: about two million dollars. We would borrow a million, and we needed to raise 700,000-plus in cash.

At the time, there were people who were very upset. They said the church was too big. I put up a slide to deal with that issue. There were people saying we had 297, and that when we moved in there would be new people, and it was too big. I did an exit interview with people who had been very involved with us from the beginning. They said they were leaving because it was too big. What was interesting is that a lady who had just moved here from Texas about a month ago, now attending East Valley, said she was so glad to be in a small church again. That was a refreshing thing to hear.

Where Do You Fit?

Here is what we asked at that point. I said to you: where do you fit? We had to raise $716,000, and I said I did not know where you fit — maybe you could give $350, maybe you could give $200,000. Here is the story: we did not raise that money. It took another year and a half. And we ended up not building for two million dollars, but for three million dollars. We ended up borrowing two million dollars rather than one million.

There were 297 people who raised that million dollars. We are now looking at 4,500 people to raise $3.5 million. So I come back to my question — where do you fit in this? I put together some numbers showing where people might fit. There is nothing magic about these numbers. I was sitting in my office and I thought: some of you, $700 is going to be a big check, and for some of you I have made the ceiling too low. When you extend the numbers out and then summarize them, we are actually over the goal. I was going to go back and change it to $3.5 million, but I thought, let's just leave it like this.

I want to emphasize something important: this is not about you judging other people. Neil came to me today and said we received a check in the building fund. I got excited and asked if it was $3.5 million. He said no — $750. But he said he knows the people, and this $750 check is sacrificial giving. It hurts them.

Giving and Your Spiritual Condition

For those of you in the training center, on staff, or trying to understand how a church works, this is a genuinely complex thing to navigate. I guarantee there will be emails from people who do not like us taking a Sunday to do this. I understand that — my first instinct was against it too. But once I talked to many of you, you convinced me we needed to do this.

This will shock you, but I do get people who tell me I do not talk enough about money — that I need to talk more about it and that people do not understand how important it is. And it is a very awkward subject for me. I will talk to you about obedience. I will talk about sexual purity. We will talk about studying God's Word, about prayer, about virtually everything. But when we get to this topic, we tend to step back, and the assumption becomes that I am trying to separate you from your money and that there are alternative motives. It is okay to admit that reaction — it is okay to admit that we are sinful people and that we think that way sometimes. But I am not after that. This is not about the building. This is about your spiritual condition.

What Happened After 2 Corinthians 8

So I went back and asked: when was the last time we taught about giving? We only address it when we reach it in the text, and the last time was 2 Corinthians chapter 8, which we reached in April of 2003. I want to show you something very interesting. For the first four or five months of 2003, the average giving was $78,000 a week. I taught on April 27th from 2 Corinthians 8. We did not do a stewardship Sunday — we simply preached through 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and spent three weeks there. Now look at the giving for those five weeks after that.

The Call to Generous Giving

I was lying in bed the other night, and I thought, I need to go back and look at those numbers, because I remember when we taught it, there was a response. This is a reflection of understanding that there is a large number of you who don't yet understand that there is an obedience issue with your cash. I wish we were talking about this at another time than the building campaign, but this is what surfaces it.

We taught a lesson — go back and listen to it. We simply taught what God says about money, and all of a sudden something happened, and there was a 23% increase in giving. You were able to get over that pretty quickly, because it only lasted for five weeks. That is an amazing slide, and I'm not sure you shouldn't print it off, put it on your computer, and keep it fresh in front of you.

The Goal and the Scorecard

Beginning next week, you are going to see a running scorecard in the bulletin. We need $3.5 million by January 31st. In just the last couple of weeks, you have given $525,369 — and that is a great start, a great beginning.

I am saying it to you again: it is not for you to figure out who needs to write the checks. You need to figure it out for yourself. Susan and I, a couple of weeks ago on our way to the doctor, stopped and had what I thought was one of the greatest experiences we have had in a while — we went to the credit union to get our money out and write our check. This is the third or fourth time we have been through this process, and I know it is painful.

Next Steps in the Process

Here is what we are going to continue to do: gather facts. When will we begin construction? Hopefully we will have that money by the 31st, we will start drawings, it will take about 12 months to plan, and then we will begin construction.

As you leave this morning and walk by those boxes, there are going to be two things there. First are the invitations for Christmas Eve — if they run out, they are in the lobby. Second, there will be men there who will give you an envelope. Inside is a card that represents your opportunity to give. You fill it out, place it in the envelope, and that money goes to Neil Pitchell.

Your Giving Is Between You, God, and Neil

I want you to understand: the only people who are aware of your giving are you, God, and Neil. I do not know who gives. If we are walking across campus next week and you have decided to do nothing and I look away, do not think I am slighting you — I do not know. This is between you, Neil, and God.

We have had people come to us and say, "Listen, I am in the middle of a deal that doesn't close until the middle of next year. Do you want that money?" It did not take long to figure that out — yes. So you will see options on the card. There will be an option to indicate that you have something happening and this is how much you can give by the end of next year or the end of 2006, tied to what we think would be the end of construction. Those cards will go to Neil and he will work through them with you.

Our goal is cash, not pledges. But if you have a situation where you know what is going to happen and it will affect the way you give, let us know and Neil will work through it with you.

Do I Think We Can Do It?

Our goal is to raise $3.5 million in the next six or seven weeks, which is huge. Do I think we can do it? No. Do I think God could do it? He could. I do not know if He is going to or not. If He does by then, we are off and running. If He does not, we are going to have to stop and take an inventory.

And I will tell you how sick we are, because you think like me. Everything in me wanted to say, "Well, I will wait until they are at $3.4 million and then I will write my check — because what if I write my check and they never get there?" We are sick people, aren't we? I am not asking you to manipulate this or to play with God.

Write the Largest Check You Can

I am asking you to sit down, listen to these words — and you do not hear these from me often — and write the largest check you can, above and beyond your regular giving. We are going to be back in three weeks telling you the budget has increased, so regular giving has to increase as well. Take a hard look at this and pray about it. Those men will be at the door.

This is really, really important. If you have any questions about the site, email them to us and we will forward them to Jack. If you have questions about the financial side of this, you really want to talk to Neil. I am happy to talk to you, but that is simply not an area where I can answer questions the way he can.

A Word of Gratitude

Thank you so much for your faithfulness. I hope this does not sound like you have not done enough — you have been extraordinarily generous, and I recognize that fully. I am simply saying here is an opportunity beyond that. Thank you so much for listening and being patient this morning.

Let us pray together. Father, thank You for this moment and this time. Thank You for what You have done, God. You have been so good, so kind, so gracious to us. God, we are not trying to presume on the future. We are saying You have done something special.