A Tale of Two Churches…and Ultimately God’s Provision

So much of our lives are tied up in these second homes we’ve had.

In 2020, we’d been a part of our church for nearly a decade.  The church started in a smallish store front.  Over the time we were there the church was able to rent out more and more bays to expand the sanctuary, add more Sunday School space, and develop offices.  The church was right at ten years old and had been searching for land to build upon.

One of the parishioners, helping with the search, was a realtor.  Land prices had moved up much more quickly than the church budget, and the search was discouraging.  The land we could afford wasn’t able to house the building the church leaders believed we needed.

The realtor happened to remember a large piece of acreage that had been listed a few years prior.  It was a great location, plenty of space, but currently off the market.  He decided to contact the owner, they went out to walk the land with him, but then there was the question of the price.  When they asked what he would ask for it, he countered with, “Well, what was it listed for before?”

In a growing town with a tremendous increase in prices.

We bought it for the five years’ ago price because he wanted the land to go to a church.

Churches take a long time to build, so it wasn’t built when we moved, found a new congregation, and settled in to a new (rented) building.  Again it wasn’t originally a church, but has been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and had a few lives since then.  The church had been in the building for about 20 years before we arrived, but one day someone found a ‘For Sale’ sign in front of the building.  The leaders let us know that we weren’t entirely sure what this would mean for us, but to be in prayer.

During the next week, one of our congregants walked out her mother’s house just as a realtor was placing a ‘For Sale’ sign in the yard of a large old church building.

In the course of one week we went to the ground breaking of our former church and our deacons attended the closing on our new building!

Neither project has gone off without any challenges, but God provided both churches with new homes!  We are so grateful to see God’s provision for both of our church families.