This Is Our Story

We have been in our new sanctuary for a month. Each week we get to enjoy the newness, the beauty, and the deep rest that follows a time of displacement. However, there’s so much we don’t want to forget. We have so many stories to tell. So we’re sharing them here in an effort not to forget the many great and wonderful things God did for us this year.

---

This has been a long journey but here’s what we have realized in hindsight:

God knew what we needed before we did, He went before us on this journey and already had people in place.

Saturday, October 3rd. An update of a post on our staff Facebook group showed this photo…

Two days prior our roofing contractor had begun fastening a new roof to the auditorium with some screws. A few hundred of these screws were drilled through our auditorium roof … and then it rained. A lot. It was literally raining through all of these holes into our auditorium.

And our staff spent hours trying to place buckets and salvage what they could.

But in the end it was a total loss.

All night we were thinking…

What in the world are we going to do?

It is awesome to have a God who lives outside of time and to realize that he is not surprised by moments like that.

We quickly realized he had gone before us.

Someone in our church had just started working for a great company called Jenkins Restoration. We got in touch with him, and they stepped in with great skill and competency.

Two weeks after this event we had a previously scheduled meeting with a company called Mountain West Architects. We had hired them to help us think through our options for renovating our facility. I called them that week and said… “yeah, about those renovations, let’s focus on the auditorium.”
Within two weeks of this we had the initial drawings for the auditorium rebuild.

We had no idea what we were in for but God did. And he strategically placed the right people in the right places to walk through this with us. And most of all, this staff team – the long hours, the good attitudes in frustrating situations, the creativity, the wisdom. God brought these people here to lead our church through this time.

As we look back on this year – one of the things we will always remember…

God knew what we needed before we did, He went before us on this journey.

God Multiplied our Resources Financially

Our original plan seemed like a pretty big financial undertaking for us – and even a little daunting. Several years ago we started setting aside money to replace our roof and update the HVAC system. Our wise leaders began intentionally saving. And after several years, we were finally ready to move forward and get a new roof.

But God’s plan was even bigger and He was ready to take what we had stewarded and turn it in to so much more! Just not in the traditional way or how we would have planned it. Imagine if you had told any of us a year ago, “Hey, you are going to complete a $1.4M project debt-free, paid in cash.”

The dream of a new sanctuary certainly wasn’t on our radar at that point; we just knew we needed a new roof.

But God used the unconventional route, a difficult and unfortunate circumstance, to show us that He is faithful to provide.

Thinking back over the last year, we’re reminded of all the ways He multiplied our resources financially:

• Our insurance claim that covered almost the entire cost of a brand new roof – and one that was better than we had planned…
• An estate gift that was put in place years ago unbeknownst to us, but God in His perfect timing knew exactly when we would receive it…
• Donations we received early on, before we even knew what to ask for or what would the need would be…
• Additional insurance funds that we thought might be a battle to get, only to receive an email saying that they were approved and a check was on its way…
• An unexpected offer of a matching gift to go alongside our special offering this summer…
• Protecting our regular giving in such a way that we didn’t have to cut back on other areas of ministry or incur any new debt to finish this project.

It’s very clear that only God could have orchestrated all of the pieces falling in to place, when they did. He has continually met our needs at just the right time, as we needed it.

God Multiplied our Resources of Space

It’s overwhelming to consider how many different groups and ministries used our facility during any given week … there are a lot of school events happening and we also have our regular groups running like AWANA, middle and high school youth groups and the Bible Study Fellowship group.

Our buildings were maxed out – or at least that’s what we thought.

The school year started in August and all of our regular programs started in September – we even added another large group on Tuesday nights – Community Bible Study.

Things were going well; systems were working as they should – then THE FLOOD happened.

Thomas MacLaren School had to shut down for a full week as the auditorium and a lot of the classrooms flooded. During that week we had to figure out how to make all of the same groups work together with less space. It didn’t seem possible. We prayed a lot. God not only helped us get through that initial week, but he also said, “I know you don’t think you have enough space here – let ME show you how I can multiply what I have already blessed Pulpit Rock with.”

Here are some numbers:

• Between the two buildings we have 72,486 sq. ft. (58,969 sq. ft in the main building and 13,517 sq. ft in the student center).
• We lost access to the auditorium, the balcony area and room 122 after the flood. That is about 9,000 sq. ft – that’s the same as five 1,800 sq. ft houses! That’s a lot of space to lose for an entire year – now that you can imagine that space – imagine it completely filled with elementary kids during AWANA game time – or filled with students and faculty of TMS – or a busy Sunday morning.
• We had no choice but to start holding services in the student center. This meant that student ministries had to move from their 13,000 sq. ft building and start running their programming in about 4000 sq. ft in the main building – that also meant shifting groups around in the main building.

God turned this 13,000 sq ft student center into a HUGE building for us.

The student center would look very different throughout the week depending on what day and time of day you came in – it was normally just a school cafeteria and a place for student ministries to meet.

Now it was a cafeteria, classroom, orchestra room, TMS assembly hall, Bible Study Fellowship worship center, Community Bible Study worship center, AWANA game and pizza night space, space for events like the women’s IF Gathering, TMS drama performances and also our sanctuary.

God took this crazy event and multiplied our space. And we continue to grow as a church.

God reminded us of Who We Are in Children’s Ministry

We saw increased flexibility in our staff, volunteers, leaders and families. Going into the first weeks after the flood, we weren’t sure what to expect as we tried to figure out what our temporary “normal” would be. We expected a decrease in attendance to our Early Childhood and Elementary programs, but what we saw was a steady increase!

In Kingdom Kids (5/K-3rd grade) we’ve seen volunteer leaders step up and do what they could to offer consistency and structure for our kids and families. Our first week back to “normal programming” after the flood we made the shift for our large group time, to a significantly smaller room and we had to figure out a way to fit 20-70 kids in there all while trying to regulate the temperature and still have technology available to our teachers and worship leaders. You know what? It has worked out surprisingly well. While we may have been more crowded, we found a tight knit sense of community among the kids and leaders.

Our kids found a new identity in the church as a whole throughout this journey. We led the Elementary kids in prayer those first few weeks after the flood, praying for the safety and health of the workers, for our staff managing and orchestrating everything on our end, for the finances needed, etc. Some kids have even prayed for these things with their families at home. Our kids took ownership and explore a new realm of generosity especially this Summer. We had kids throwing bake sales, having lemonade stands, even garage sales to be able to donate to the church. Even the preschoolers were bringing in more offering than normal as we were collecting for our renovation funds.

So while this last year has been one of adjustments, flexibility and trust, this year has also been a year that cultivated an identity for our Elementary and Early Childhood kids. An identity as they have realized their part of the whole church body.

God reminded us of Who We Are in Student Ministry

Over the last 12 months God has used our challenging circumstances to reshape some aspects of Pulpit Rock Student Ministries. As we handed over our awesome Student Center to the church body for worship services, it was hard to see anything but what we were losing. Our loud sound system, our big screens, our furniture and our space…but stepping away from those things has proved to be so beneficial for us.

Losing so many tools of ministry actually helped remind us of the only thing that really matters. Cool spaces aren’t the salt of the earth. Programs aren’t the salt of the earth. PEOPLE are the salt of the earth.

In our little cramped classrooms, we began to realize the impact of CONNECTION and COMMUNITY over cool space and slick programming.

We focused more on relationships and fun interaction with each other instead of entertainment presented from a stage. In High School we started teaching in the round, like a socratic style and the students have loved it. We used to really focus on cool programming. Now our priority is warm environments.

WARM is the new COOL. And I don’t know that we would have come to that conclusion had the flood never happened. It’s like the flood waters made these important values rise to the top, above everything else, so we could see them more clearly.

As we move back into our space in the Student Center, we are going to hold tight to those values. God really does work things together for our good, even difficult things. And God has used this journey we’ve been on for the last 12 months to remind PRiSM of who WE are.

God reminded us of Who We Are in Adult Ministry

One of the most important things God reminded us of in this process is that Pulpit Rock Church is so much more than just a physical building. In the midst of being displaced and sharing a single space with so many of our ministries, we understood that guests may not want to come visit at Pulpit Rock, or would come once and then choose to move on. None of us anticipated people being able to overlook these challenges, but God knew that this church family is not tied to any space or place.

Earlier this year, in the midst of our rebuilding project, we launched Starting Point. These lunches are held about once a month where folks that are new to our church can come have a meal with some of our staff, hear from our pastors and take part in a Q&A session about Pulpit Rock. God has brought over 100 new faces to Starting Point! Our regular weekly attendance has increased as well. Families and individuals saw beyond all of our construction mess and our closely shared spaces and they were drawn to us anyway. People have been able to see who we are here and who we are seeking to be in our city. God continued to allow us to grow in spite of what was happening in our building.

Not only did He bring us new folks, He encouraged us to continue our practice of looking outside of ourselves in our Christmas giving. The annual offering last December was a time where we wanted to use those gifts to help provide refuge to others who were displaced in our city and around the world, at a time where we could have switched the focus back to our own expenses. We chose to continue to trust His leading and focus not on our own needs. As a result of that obedience our Christmas offering was larger than it’s ever been! Your giving allowed us to meet and exceed the goal and with this offering we were able to provide housing for families in Haiti that were living in tarps and help refugees new to Colorado Springs, among other things. He blessed us with an abundance when we continued to pursue something bigger than ourselves.

And so we found ourselves…

Over and over throughout this process, he reminded us who we are and his favor was on us as we lived out of that identity.

We spent a lot of time this year looking at the words from Solomon:
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:8-9

These words are so true on two levels.

First, Solomon connects the patience and learning that can take place as we wait for the end of a thing. We are so thankful to God that he took us on this detour. Our staff have risen with patience in spirit as we labored to lead a church without a sanctuary, without a meeting place, without an AWANA room. We have seen you choose to not be quick in your spirit to be angry as we have made sacrifices and adjustments. God has taught us so much these last 12 months as we have waited for the end of a thing.

We would not trade this year for anything.

Thank you, great men and women of God, for your patience in spirit.

But these words of Solomon are also true for another reason: This is not the end of a thing. We may have thought getting in the building was the end of a thing. No, it is a new beginning of a thing. A new chapter in the life of this thing called Pulpit Rock Church.

In this new chapter, God will use this room…

• To help people come to believe, In Christ, I am accepted.
• To help people find healing and hope for their journey with God.
  To help men and women make commitments, to Christ, to each other, to themselves in this room.
• To help kids play and laugh as they learn about a God who plays and laughs with them.
• To help the city feel the love of Good Samaritans.
• To help marriages begin, grow, restart.
• To help the living to lay it to heart as they lay loved ones to rest.
• To help us gather at the halftime of every week, so we can go out of this place into the real game – the game of life – of helping people journey with God as we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

This is not the end of a thing. It is the beginning of a thing.

The end of a thing is coming. That is the day we sit at the table with the Host who used to look so hazy, and tell story after story of God and his works through people like us.