Weekly Update from the Senior Pastor
February 23, 2006 
Dear Family and Friends,
Do one minute of deep theology with me. Ponder:
Last Sunday Bob lead us into a study of the most common name for God in Scripture: ELOHIM, which literally means “the Mighty ONE—plural”! God is the mighty ONE, says the Bible, yet God is known in a plurality that begins in the beginning, when, at creation, God says: “Let US make man in OUR image” (Genesis 1:26). The reason there is a longing for community inside us, a desire to truly know and be known, to love and be loved, is because God is an eternal community of Three, who are One in purpose and essence.
Now one minute of personal application:
Our God is the mighty One. He created a universe of hundreds of galaxies so vast that to travel from the outside points of just the two CLOSEST galaxies to each other would take 13 billion years traveling at 186,000 miles per second—every second, 186,000 miles, for 13 billion years and you’ve covered one small corner of Elohim’s universe. He can handle our storms. He can hold together our lives. We can truly trust ourselves, and all we have, to Him today. Have you?
UPDATES:
In the last Update I briefly laid out three interim options for where we will camp between our present location and our new facility on the seventy acres we’re purchasing at the corner of Barthalows and Route 144. Then I requested your feedback to the Development Team. Great thanks to those of you who are sharing perspectives—it is so helpful. Let me remind you of those three current top options:
- Damascus High (stay close to where we are for interim);
- Linganore High (move up into Frederick County, where our new facility will be, during interim) and
- Westridge Shopping Center (most expensive and farthest, but give us an interim facility where we still have a seven-day a week location).
There are many factors in this simplistic presentation of three choices. One example, we may be able to renovate an existing structure on the land and add several modular units, so that our offices, meeting rooms and practice space for praise teams (maybe even our Wednesday evening Youth ministry functions) would be at our permanent site all during the interim. This would be great for drawing many teams and members to our new home as it is being built.
Bryan Chaney reviewed the input we’ve received so far and came up with several commonly asked questions. Let me share a couple of these FAQ’s and answer them briefly:
Q: Why do we even need a temporary location, why can we just put up a temporary building on the land?
A: The County zoning and land prep process is the same for a temporary or permanent structure (usually taking around 18 months); and the placement of the building is fixed, so if we put a temporary building on the site approved after 18 months, we would need to begin again a new zoning process for the permanent building.
Q. Why haven't we closed on the land yet?
A. Closing is complicated as we have tried numerous options to save money through win/win structuring of the deals with the Kelleys, involving tax-deductible gifts on their part. We will close in March and we will save between $40-60,000 through an appraisal, gift back deal: not much in a million dollar deal, but it helps!
Q. Why did we sign such an expensive lease option? Why didn't we just leave and go to a school to save money?
A. YOU. And offices! Switching from a nice, known, seven-day a week facility that may not be perfect, but it’s been a good home for six years, to all the challenges of a weekly set-up process for worship services and Children’s Ministry is a major shift. It takes strong congregational buy-in—and a clear end goal of a new home. We didn’t have either. Plus, Hekemian, our landlord, kept holding out potential deals, then pulling back. When we came to the deadline for leaving or staying for the final year, we had little time to process that choice; with a myriad of issues still unresolved, such as where we would worship, where our offices would be, or our meeting spaces for various teams, or our mid-week activities such as Youth and Praise practices, purchasing mobile equipment and storing valuable assets from this facility. A quick move could have ended up more expensive than exercising our final option—which has given us time to plan more carefully and engage YOU in the process.
We’ll answer a few more questions next week. Please keep praying that we will understand where God is guiding and trust that He is providing (He is). And keep asking questions, offering input and dreaming of options. Communicate! And we will too.
Rajendra leaves for His Mission India pre-trip on March 1st. During his week there, Rajendra will visit all our micro-business ministry sites. He will review our work with Deepika Foundation—a Christian non-profit that works with former prostitutes and their children, and the school where we provided shoes and socks for the poor students. Later this Fall (or early next Spring), we will send our first small India Missions team to work in these ministries that are touching the lives of hundreds of children in Calcutta. Please pray for Rajendra’s safety and then the strategic meetings for planning the next phase of our India Missions.
Much love,
Richard
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