Church Family,
In the early Fall of 2017, our church elected a Building Committee to evaluate, research, and recommend the next steps for our church's building plans. This process has been working simultaneously as the Envision 20/20 Stewardship Campaign; which we are a little over a year into. After a great deal of prayer, discussion, visiting other churches, and refining the design, we are ready to report to our church on March 3, at 5pm in the sanctuary. The meeting will consist of the committee sharing a plan with our church, and then we will allow time for questions. This night is not a business meeting where we vote. We simply want to share and give our church time to process and ask questions. The committee will then have follow-up meetings with several smaller groups. After that, we will have another all-inclusive meeting to give everyone one final chance to ask questions. Once done, we will have a business meeting to vote on the steps to be taken.
I do not want to go into great detail here, but I want to share a couple of thoughts to prepare you for the meeting and give you a direction for personal prayer. First, the committee has spent a great deal of time in prayer both together and individually. We visited three churches to see their design, and we took a video tour of another church. We have tried to take into account what they did while focusing on what we believe will work best in our context. During our first meeting, we asked two questions. Why do we need to do this, and what are our greatest needs? We will share those answers during the meeting, but I want you to know that the answers to those questions are what have motivated and shaped what we are going to present. In addition, we looked at the ministries we are doing here regularly. We do not believe it makes sense to let ministries that are outside of our church and use our building to dictate what we do. Neither does it make sense to design a building based on things that happen once a year.
Remember that what is presented is a balance of our greatest needs, a step of faith, and also stewardship of God's resources. Please be in prayer for unity in our church. We know this will be an opportunity for Satan to divide us. So, be in prayer for yourself and our church that we work together through any differing opinions in a Godly manner. Pray for yourself as well that you will be willing to think out-of-the-box, sacrifice personal preference, and honor the Lord with how we steward His resources.
In Christ,
Mark Smith, Pastor of FBC Jacksonville, AR
