A Story We Are Following
We have had the privilege to follow one of our sister churches in Charlotte, NC. Loran Livingston is the pastor and has led the church to a mortgage free position. He has ministered there over 25 years and is now land locked on 25 acres. Attendance there approximates 4,000 and the membership has made significant strides since making the decision to be mortgage free. Here are some of the benchmarks they were able to accomplish by God’s grace… No MORTGAGE in the past 17 years!
Since then they have...
• Built an administration building with cash (2 million).• Built their youth center with cash (6 million).
• Built their children’s center with cash (3 million).
• Last year purchased a K-12 private school with property and facilities with cash.
Missions
• This year they will invest over 1.65 million in international missions.• They are in over 30 countries and have 80 projects with pastoral teams dedicated to oversee and manage them.
• They have multiple lay teams going on mission projects multiple times per year to deepen the harvest impact. These include orphanages, digging wells for clean water, food needs, church plants, housing, trainings, choir tours, etc.
Expanding Ministries
• This year one of their expansion ministries is the restorative prison ministry.• So far this year, they have seen 4000 conversions and have teams to follow up with full discipleship.
For the LEAN TIMES…
They intentionally use consistent:• savings approaches and deep reserve funds
• deep sinking funds for big ticket items