My home Church, Grace Church Nottingham, has been on something of a whirlwind journey recently. For the last few years we've been looking to lease a building as a more permanent alternative to rented rooms at the Notts County Football Ground that we are beginning to outgrow. On Sept 29th last year our venue team took at a look the former Labour Exchange right in the center of Nottingham. It was wonderful, but far too big (and almost certainly too expensive to lease).
Now a mere 4 months later Grace Church owns the building!
There isn't time or space to list all the marvelous ways that God has helped us through this season but here are a few...
As a Church we only had 3 weeks to raise a deposit. We had 1 week to offically announce an offering and then take it up. Things moved so fast that the information pack the church intended to produce never got made and a national postal strike mean the offering plans had to be rethought even as they were being announced.
And yet by the grace of God we raised £267,000 in a single offering!
Our church has about 200 members, around half of them students. This is nothing short of miraculous.
We beat 3 other commercial bidders.
We not only were granted 'change of use' planning permission on first attempt (very rare) but obtained it 2 weeks early. This is unheard of!
God went ahead of us in adding to us church members with experience in architecture, finance, project management and urban planning to serve on a venue team. These people have been such a blessing to us. We thank God for them.
In a few weeks we will have our last meeting at the Notts County Football Ground and begin a new chapter in the history of our church.
God is amazing, and a master of the unexpected.
Related Posts: Behind The Song: No Other God
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.