FAQ

1. 1. More people will hear the gospel and experience the love of Jesus
   2. It will enhance the experience for teens and children within our church and city
   3. It will give our ministries and our city multi-purpose spaces for gatherings
   4. It will provide a permanent and visible presence in our region
   5. It will create more accessibility for more people to experience our weekend gatherings

We are anticipating that the final cost is going to come between $9 and $11 million.

Our hope is to raise 100%. However, through the consulting and advising that we have been given, based on the analytics of our giving trends and our annual budget, we have been advised to raise $6 million dollars of the total cost through the body of Grace Chapel and to finance the remaining. The lending that we are going through has no pre-payment penalty, which allows us to pay off the debt without additional costs. Our goal is to pay off this building as soon as possible. As a comparison, the Heart of the City building was bought by Grace Chapel. When Grace Chapel started, we bought that building and financed it. We were eventually able to pay it off and it has now been an asset for us. We are hoping to be able to follow that same process.

The Number one way you can support us is through your prayers. Prayer is the only way we will be able to reach these goals. Number two, is that we hope you will be able to share this story of what God is doing and the vision of what we hope to accomplish through this. Number three, we hope that you will be able to volunteer as needed when there are opportunities to serve. Number four is that you would be able to give financially to help us reach our financial goals.

Our elders, building team and staff have all worked together and we are 100% unified in the direction we are going and what we are accomplishing through this process. We have also hired a financial consultant and sought out leaders that have experience with churches navigating through building campaigns. All of that has provided wise counsel and wisdom, perspective, and strategies that have been very helpful.

We own it and it’s cheaper to own than lease for the two years we will need to utilize the mobile church setup. We bought it at cost, which saved us thousands of dollars and we can resell it, we can help a church plant in a new location, or we can give it to a church. We have many choices but we do not need to make that decision today.

We are in the school for the timeframe of the construction timeline; we are looking to hopefully have our building finished with construction with a grand opening of Easter 2020. So this would mean we are in a school for just under 2 years.

At this point the schools are not guaranteeing us long-term usage. The schools are not at freedom to give us ongoing commitments which puts us in a position as a church to not know where we are going to meet. Every 6 months raises the question of where we are going to meet.

We are using it as a factor for our lending process because it is an asset we own. But we are planning on staying there and using that until we grow out of it. The long term vision for Heart of the City is to continue to offer services and grow, we are anticipating at some point that we are going to move into a larger facility.

Our goal is not to just raise the financial resources to build this building, our goal is to live radically generous that would meet the needs of this building, but would be ongoing for this church and in order for us to contribute financially to projects and our partners globally.

We have been faithfully saving money towards this and will make a sizable down payment contribution from our own budget.

Our staff have always ran a very responsible budget, and we will continue to allow our budgets to support the growth of the ministry. At this point we are not anticipating having to make any significant cuts to our budget.

Ownership and usage are two different things. We will take ownership of it, which does allow us to have access to it, but that does not mean it is set up for us to use. With the construction that will be taking place, our priority is to make sure that we have a safe facility for any of our gatherings and so construction will determine what is safe to us to use or not use.

The benefit of this site is that it does provide some parking, however the great advantage of this site is that we have a partnership with the properties across the street to use their parking for our gatherings. This allows us to to be able to have enough parking without having to pay for parking on our facility site and has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Our hope is that everyone will be able to be apart of the story of God’s miracle to provide our financial goals. Our hope is that everyone would be able to contribute something wether it is large or very small, every gift is significant and gives everyone the opportunity to say that they have contributed. We do realize for many people there can be financial hardships, so there will be ways for spiritual equity and sweat equity where individuals will be given the opportunity to support the campaign other than just financially.

We will not be able to have office use at the building because of construction. At the same time, having office space has more to do with the fact that we are in a weekly Sunday gathering at a school, which does not allow us to have a consistent office for people to meet at for meetings. Our office lease allows us to accomplish three things:

1. 1. It allows us to have a place for our staff to meet, and to meet with ministry leaders
   2. It allows us to have on site storage for our mobile church
   3. It allows us to have meeting space for mid week meetings with leaders and Ardent