Starting on March 14th,
Gospel Hope will be gathering in a new location.
As many of you know, over the last couple years we have been building a relationship with Avondale Estates First Baptist Church (FBC) which is located less than a mile from our current location. Because of this friendship and shared desire to reach our community, FBC has invited Gospel Hope to use space in their facility. Although we are incredibly grateful for our current space and for how accommodating the leadership at Belvedere Seventh Day Adventist have been towards us, we believe that this move is strategic for several reasons.
DEDICATED WORSHIP SPACE
First of all, our new facility will give Gospel Hope dedicated worship space. That is, the space where we hold our Sunday gatherings will be semi-permanent, and therefore, will not need to be set up and taken down every week. Not only will this relieve some of the workload from our ministry teams, but it will reduce the wear and tear on our equipment. This will also allow our space to reflect a little bit more of Gospel Hope’s ministry identity. The staff is working diligently on putting this all together, and I think everyone is going to really appreciate the end result.
MORE PERMANENT PRESENCE IN THE COMMUNITY
Second, on top of having a worship space of our own at the new facility, we will also have access to several additional rooms in the building, including office, storage and classroom space. Among other things, these spaces will allow Gospel Hope to establish a more permanent presence in our community, enhance our Gospel Hope Kids and Student ministries, launch non-English speaking church plants, provide biblically rooted counseling services to our neighbors and offer a wider variety of ministries both in-person and online. We are deeply encouraged by these new opportunities and looking forward to what the Lord may have in store for us.
FINANICAL STEWARDSHIP
Finally, even with all these additional benefits, this move will actually save us a significant amount in rent. Because FBC is excited about what the Lord is doing at Gospel Hope, they are being extremely gracious to us and charging us far less than what they reasonably could for the use of this amount of space. We are certainly thankful for their generosity and partnership in ministry.
Pastor Rod, myself, and the staff team are excited about this new opportunity. But as you can imagine, there is some work to be done in order to get us prepared to worship in our new space by March 14th. To pull this off well, we are going to need some help. In light of this, we are planning a series of three workdays on Saturday, February 20th; Saturday, February 27th; and Sunday, March 7th. You can find descriptions of each of these workdays on the Church Center App, and we would love for all of you to participate in whatever way you can.
As always, Pastor Rod and I continue to be amazed at the Lord’s kindness towards our church and feel extremely privileged to lead such a wonderful group of kingdom-minded disciples. Let’s all pray that the Lord uses this endeavor to even more clearly display the reconciling hope of the gospel through our church.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Ryan