Church projects more challenging after the boom times:
Around the mid-1990s, a building boom took off for churches in Bismarck and Mandan. At least 40 took on remodeling or additions to their facilities. Though some were modest, close to half of those projects topped the $1 million mark. A few reached the $3 million-$4 million territory.
That boom was part of a national trend of church-building, said the Rev. Tim Johnson, who has been interim senior pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bismarck since February 2010.
However, around 2008, as the economy soured, churches around the country still wanting to build found that lenders had grown more cautious. And in some cases, churches that had undertaken large building projects found themselves struggling under the debt load.
Good Shepherd broke ground for a second campus, called Horizon, along North Washington Street north of 43rd Avenue in 2005, anticipating that the galloping growth in new subdivisions in north Bismarck would call for a second facility. At that time, Good Shepherd, across from the YMCA at Washington Street and Divide Avenue, was bursting at the seams, struggling with parking and adding worship times to accommodate its numbers.
A new north campus seemed like a logical solution.
In hindsight, it turned out to be a financial overreach, Johnson said.
"It was a good idea, a good dream, but the growth didn't come as expected," he said. The financial burden of carrying the $2.7 million building became undoable.
Read more
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/church-projects-more-challenging-after-the-boom-times/article_7c712584-43ba-11e1-afd2-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1kVY2fslX
'via Blog this'
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| We're in your synod, wasting your offering dollars, kneeling before false teachers, because we love Jesus so much. |
GJ - WELS waited for the bottom of the real estate market and bought a new headquarters building, PU Towers, and ended up with an unsold Love Shack. Savvy money management, that.
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bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Church projects more challenging after the boom ti...":
That reminds me. I wonder how Holy Word's church plant is proceeding in Austin, Texas--the branch of Holy Word that is only a couple of miles from Doebler's Rock n Roll church in Round Rock, Texas:
http://www.holyword.net/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=140015469&sec_id=140005270
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| Nearby, Doebler had real, live bunnies to pet for Easter, and an egg hunt. Top that! |
LutherRocks has left a new comment on your post "Church projects more challenging after the boom ti...":
They have had to apply paddles on more than one occasion as I fear the north campus is in cardiac arrest. Attendance was 89 on the 15th of January, but before that only in the 40's. They went so far as to eliminate the 8 am service at the south campus (sounds so metro..I know) during December to jump start attendance at north.
You know, most people just want to gather at the feet of Jesus and hear the Word and then share it with those in their circles when the opportunity presents itself. They are not all into being something that the Lord may not have intended them for.
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GJ - I am trying to figure out WELS stewardship, with that expert CEO (ex-SP) Gurgle helping out at Holy Word. After I made fun of all the spelling mistakes in Gurgle's ecstatic emails, I stopped getting them from my source.
Do you think HE is fight4god? No, God called Gurgle's entire family into the ministry, and fight4god is the only one in his.
Holy Word decided to expand into the same suburb as a new WELS mission, which is still trying to get on its feet. To do this, Kudu Don Patterson had to raise a lot of money. So he gave the WELS-LCMS fundraising business $40,000 of offering money to raise the dough. Questioning that fat fee meant excommunication.
But Holy Word is so needy that they must have a free vicar each year, courtesy of WELS offering money.
