You may not have heard our big news. Grace Fellowship Church has two encouraging announcements to make.
A New Auditorium
First off, we have prayed for many years that the Lord would provide us a physical meeting place of our own. He has faithfully done that through our long-term partnership with Timothy Christian School. TCS has been a great landlord and I hope we have been a decent enough tenant. Even though we have desired our “own” place, we have developed a very workable relationship with the school that enables us to do almost everything we want to do as we work around their schedule.
Last summer we started talks with the school concerning a building project. It has been their desire to increase the gym size which would be of immediate benefit to us. Grace Fellowship Church currently pushes some 50 folks into a video feed overflow room so getting a new auditorium that seats 400 instead of 200 is a big help to us.
The project also includes an addition along the front of the building with a new lobby area and new office space. As we got to talking, the school offered to include us in the project. So, for a donation of $150,000, we help finish the new auditorium, gain all new (real), permanent office space, and guarantee our rental for the next ten years. This seemed like a great move to our members, so we jumped in with both feet.
We intend to help with the purchase of seating and a sound system on top of this $150,000 donation. We are excited to work with the school on this and even more excited to get renovated bathrooms! :-)
A New Summer Meeting Location
The construction is scheduled to begin July 1. That leads to our second announcement. Since the bathrooms are being gutted and most of the parking lot will be fenced off over the summer, we have decided to move our summer services to a nearby school. For every Sunday in July and August we will be meeting at St. Basil the Great College School (20 Starview Lane, North York, ON, M9M 3B2 - just 3km from our current meeting location). Due to the increased rental cost and the unavailability of TCS, we are only able to offer one service during the summer at our normal time of 10AM. The nice things about being at St. Basil are that we will all be in one room, there should be some air conditioning for the hot months of the year and there is still plenty of free parking.
We are super grateful to TCS for inviting us in to their building project. Although we do not end up increasing our capitol (our donation does not buy ownership), we are pleased to help another Christian group and thrilled to have a facility for our unhindered use during our rental times. Plus, TCS is a great group of people to work with. We are thankful for the Lord’s provision.
Want to Help?
A number of pastors and other folks have asked me if they can help us in any way. That is part of the reason for this post. We have about $92,000 pledged toward our $150,000 goal. I am thankful that a church of our size, economic standing and age (we are very young) has been able to come up with these funds, but it leaves us a little shy of what we need. So, if you would like to help us in this project you are welcome to make a donation. You can do that online at gfcto.com/donate It would be pretty cool to see the Lord provide that needed $58,000 by September 1 when we intend to make our donation to the school.
We are so very grateful to our wise God for all the ways He answers our prayers and supplies our every need. If you have a second, please thank Him with us for all He has done!
