Moving On
For many of you who call Elmwood home you know we have been in a season of prayer about the possibility of moving to a more permanent facility. We know that a building is not the Church – people make up the church a building is just that – bricks and mortar a tool to accomplish God’s mission to redeem humanity back into relationship with Him.
Several months ago I sat down with some of our leadership and we put together a grid by which we would look for a facility that we could have access to more than just a couple of hours on Sunday morning. We established a few things such as proximity, expandability – cost. Could we find a place that cost less or at least not any more than we were spending presently? The Regal is a very nice facility but it is not cheap. We want to be good stewards of the resources that God gives us and to be wise managers of His ‘stuff.’
Just so you know my heart the main driver for finding a different facility than the Regal is our King’s World Team members. We do not have any flexibility as to the times we can use the Regal. It has been my desire to have two Gathering’s so that those who serve in KW can also experience a Worship Gathering that day. Because we have to be out of the Regal by 11:15 we cannot do this. KW Team members are on a every-other week rotation so right now they only get to be a part of our adult worship experience twice a month! This kind of schedule is not spiritually sustainable and healthy nor is it physically sustainable for obvious reasons. We highly value our KW Team and because of that we need to get to place where we can have two Gatherings every Sunday.
So we started looking and God I believe brought the Warehouse at 1800 Elmwood across our path. We negotiated a 60 day due diligence period to see if this would be a good fit for us. We brought in Architects, General Contractors and others to help us get a good idea what it would cost to make this happen. We then asked for another 30 days so that we could go to some town meetings that we would have to get some change of use approval and to get some more of our questions answered as to the usage of this facility.
After spending many hours thinking, investigating, praying we have come to a decision to NOT pursue the Warehouse any longer and to ‘move on’ in our pursuit of another facility.
I am in complete peace with this decision. We have I think done the hard work of good -due diligence that God’s Word tells us to do and we have prayed through every decision. It finally came down to this move would cost us too much. In light of our MISSION to reach every man, woman and child we did NOT want to put ourselves (Elmwood) in a position that all we were doing with our resources was paying for, keeping up with a building. Through this journey of discovery God has directed our paths – we truly desired to put our TRUST not in our own thoughts, ideas, desires but God’s BEST for Elmwood.
Do not be disappointed – I am not and neither is the rest of the staff – through this journey God has taken us through different twist and turns and I think has made us wiser, stronger and more dependent on Him – His story for Elmwood has not stopped at all – in fact He may already be doing something else – but that is another post for another day! 
