The Gift of a Lifetime

The following is taken from Pastor Clark’s message of November 18/19.

Curt Lehman was the founding and senior pastor of this church for 32 years. He was also my pastor and my ministry mentor. Over the years, he taught me many things. But perhaps the most significant to me was what I would call this divinely inspired restlessness that defined his life. As long as there is one more person out there who does not know Jesus, the job is not done and it has to be full speed ahead.

It’s how he lived his life, but it’s also what he told me over and over again—that you can’t get lost in programs and methodologies, but there has to be this undying passion to reach lost people and see them discipled to become like Jesus.  In order to accomplish that, significant steps of faith must be taken.

Three years ago, the Official Board met and had a very long, very intense discussion realizing that God was leading us to recognize that this was the time for our step of faith. By the end of that evening, we all got on our knees and we committed before God to move forward. Understand, that night we did not get out a bunch of charts and graphs and pour through them and conclude that it looks like this is very reasonable and possible. As a matter of fact, it was just the opposite. It was absolutely overwhelming.

There are times when God leads His people to step out into things that are way too big for them so that the only choice is to be dependent upon God, and God will have to show up, and we know that God is God. And that’s exactly where we were that night.

In January of 2004, we introduced what has become known as the “For This Purpose I Live” campaign and we laid out the vision of what God was leading us to do.  The last three years have been both exciting and very hard.  There are times when it feels overwhelming.  But we’ve seen God do some significant things in peoples’ lives, not only in their giving, but also in learning to live for that which will last.

Where are we now? Well, from now until the end of July is a critical time period. The bank has agreed to an $8 million mortgage, which means that by July 31 our remaining building expenses can be no more than $8 million.  That will require great giving to our General and Missions funds and the remaining $2.5 million of pledged Purpose money to come in between now and the end of July. No matter what, we have to get to that point.  Beyond this, we believe God may be calling us to pay off everything so that no mortgage would be needed.  This would save more than $5.4 million in interest charges that could be channeled into ministry.  In addition, because our new auditorium allows us to grow for years to come, we believe it is possible to pay off this building and move forward on a cash basis, never to need to borrow money again.  So this moment could define our ability to do ministry for generations to come.

So what do we need to do? First, we need people who have made a pledge to fulfill that pledge. We still have about $2.5 million in outstanding pledges and we’re asking everyone to fulfill the promise they made.

Second, there are some of you who weren’t around three years ago when we initiated this, or you just weren’t in a position to help. We would ask you to prayerfully consider getting on board in these critical months between now and July.

Third, I am asking you to think about giving the “gift of a lifetime”. What I mean by that is every year we talk about how important year-end giving is, that’s the rhythm of church life—and always will be. I’m not saying we need a good year-end.  I’m saying we need a good year-end times ten! This is a “gift of a lifetime” moment. I wrestled this week before God about using this term.  I do not want to over-dramatize this and use language that I don’t think is accurate. In my 23 years as a pastor I’ve never used that phrase before, and I don’t anticipate I ever will again.

In 45 years of history, you can count on one hand the number of these kinds of moments. And it’s hard for me to imagine in the next 20 or 30 years that there will be another one like this.  So I’m asking you, would you prayerfully consider what I’m calling the “gift of a lifetime”? This is one of those rare moments that will define us as a generation, one of those moments that people in the past have sacrificially responded to in order to make this possible for us today that we might do the same for the generations to come.

I realize there are 101 different things that we could spend money on. I’ve got that list and so do you. But I’m asking you—between now and July—would you prayerfully consider what God would have you do?  Would you consider this moment to be the time to take a big step of faith and give the “gift of a lifetime”?