The Water Split

As you know, we have been in a contract for the 38 acres behind our current 20 acre parcel. Since the beginning, the owners have been willing to offer us owner financing over the next 6 years at one payment per year due every January. Our first yearly payment would not be due until January 2010. However, to actually purchase the land and start to use it, we of course had to come up with a higher down payment of 125K at closing. From that point we would own the land and could start using it and immediately make plans for fields, walking trails and of course future expansion.

Our Lead Team had decided that the best course of actions was to refinance our current building loan and use the equity to pay the initial down payment and then use budget money to make the yearly payment to the family. However, as you know, the bottom fell out of our economy and the banks that are not closing.... are not lending either. So, with only a 1/4 of the money needed to close, we "kept walking toward the river" and seeking to get the land rezoned and praying that God would find a way.

Last week two families who love this church and the long term purpose God has for it stepped up in these hard economical times and gave sacrificially. Their gifts gave us a total of 75K to offer to the family as the best we could do with a down payment. We offered this reduction of down payment and no changes to the original contract or payments for 2 years and "stepped into the water" that is economically raging at flood status toward our dream.

God showed up and the family has accepted our much lower down payment offer and no additional money needed until 2011. The final rezoning should happen this Monday night and we will close on those beautiful 38 acres behind us on Tuesday. Securing this property with owner financing was a smart treat 9 months ago......who would have ever known that it would be the only way to go in these banking crisis times. Now, we can continue to move forward with our long-range dream of having a large campus on the corner of 485/74 that impacts our city in amazing ways. This dream is both short term and longterm....and it starts with small steps.

Dreams that come from God are worth pursuing......be here Sunday as we look at how to Fail Forward when our dreams hit bumps in the road.

How is your personal dream life going? I read today on the Myteamchurch.com site about a mom in our church hat has started taking drum lessons because she always had a dream to play the drums in a band....but never MOVED. She is moving now and having a blast!

Today's Bible Reading Galatians 3 & 4

Galatians 3:28-29 is a great verse for our wonderful new presidential reality. It says that in Christ their is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. What this means is that if anyone of any nationality, color or gender has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior then God sees us all the same with no favoritism. God does not like one person anymore than another and each person on this earth has the privilege of coming to faith in Jesus Christ through the grace offered on the cross.

This is the verse my good friend, Pastor Stacey Lemay, used a few months ago when he brought his predominately black church to join with us for a great baptism service where black and white were baptized here in an amazing display of racial harmony when we are all in Christ! We will be doing that again at the first of the year.