How would you like to have a billion dollars worth or real estate to help with your newest church plant? We did and it was better than we expected.
We actually started our current congregation under a tree in a beach park—illegally. Not real fun when the policeman would slowly check us out each week just before it was time for that oh-so-crucial offering.
From there we moved to a park building and then to fifteen years in public schools.
I might add that, though God was blessing, we were real good at self pity over temporary quarters.
Then it hit us, we were actually using more than a billion dollars worth of real estate for our operations. This included the magnificent public school campus, several axillary parking lots, our office building, 150 houses for home groups, several coffee shops, a host of campgrounds and two hotel ballrooms.
We got so excited that we created a notebook called, “Our Church Campus.” It included photos of each site available to us along with pertinent data for rental and logistics.
It worked well for a season and we finally landed on our own campus after seventeen years in temporary quarters. We still have more than a billion dollars worth of real estate, but I have to admit that we actually had more fun while we were totally dependent on rented quarters and all the variety they provided.
There is always that never ending longing for “the good old days.”
