July Highlights!
We know that the church is not a building. But having a building helps! We can’t be more amazed by how God has provided and paved the way for us to find just the right space for Local Church’s first home. So much has happened this past month. Here’s my attempt to give you the highlights!
Our new building!
We are officially in our very own building!! 🎉When we first arrived on Long Island, we felt pretty strongly that we were meant to find an existing church building to rent as our first home. We considered some portable options and community centers but always returned to feeling like that was not what God had planned for Local Church. At the beginning of June, we reached out to Village of Faith church in Farmingville. This is an established church with a long-standing presence and impact on the community. Since our first conversation with their team, we felt a lot of peace and excitement! (In fact, they really felt like family!) The space, the landlords, the location, and the price could not look more like what we have prayed for. Basically, we are renting an entire wing of their building while they continue to have their services on the other side. Our spaces are connected by a hallway, but we have our own auditorium, cafe, bathrooms, and classrooms. Keep your eyes out for an email with a walk-through tour soon.
We are currently working on construction projects, installations, and decorating to make the space feel like what we have envisioned for Local Church. We hold our launch team meetings here and have lots of other exciting pre-launch events in the works. None of this would be possible without those of you who have invested so much in terms of prayer, finances, and encouragement! Thank you for allowing God to use you to bring a new church to life on Long Island!
Help us get ready to launch!
Our official launch date is scheduled for October 3rd! We can’t say enough how thankful we are to start in a permanent space rather than being portable each week. But this does mean that there is A LOT to do before we launch. If you are on Long Island and want to help with painting, construction, cleaning, or anything else, please let us know!
Our first big Sam’s club trip!
Would you donate a chair?
Another way to help us get ready to launch is by donating a chair. We need to buy 100 chairs for our new auditorium and want to invite you to donate towards this expense. When you donate $49.99, you are donating more than just a piece of furniture. This seat is where someone will hear about Jesus for the first time! It may be the seat where someone decides to love God, break an addiction, restore a marriage, change their attitude, or adopt a child.
We want to invite you to donate the cost of a chair and then spend time praying over the soul who will be sitting in it one day soon! Click the button below to be brought directly to our giving link. Thank you for your generosity!
Small but mighty!
Each Sunday, we gather our launch team together and discuss the vision God has given us for Local Church! We eat bagels, celebrate, share stories, and grow together. Then we get to visit other great churches on Long Island! Each meeting we say, “One day these meetings will end, and it will be sad.” And honestly, it’s already sad to think that soon, our Sundays will look a lot different. Our launch team may be small…but we are mighty. Our favorite part about this team is how everyone uses the pronouns “our” and “we.” Everyone has taken ownership and cares deeply about Local Church and one another. We are hopeful that this same dynamic carries over as our team grows over the next several months.
Other Great Churches
We are continually amazed that God brought us home to be part of what He is doing on Long Island! There are some really incredible churches here and we are thankful for their continued partnership and support of what we are doing. In fact, we are financially supported on a monthly basis by 4 other LI churches in addition to 5 others that have made one-time donations. We share this because we believe that God is doing something special here and we are humbled to be a part of it!
Our relationship with other churches also brings us the opportunity to guest speak. Michael was invited to speak at Community Church in Babylon in the beginning of July. He taught on the parable of the Good Samaritan and the kind of love that Jesus requires of us. You can watch that message here.
Following Jesus
Amongst all the tasks and excitement of starting a new church, we are also working on our mission of inspiring Long Islanders to follow Jesus. This is why I quit my teaching job. This is why we moved back home. This is why we are constantly meeting with people. This is why we do everything that we do. And we are already seeing people around us take small (and big!) steps closer to Jesus. We have watched as people have, for the first time, read the bible, prayed out loud, discovered truths about Jesus and the church, and opened their eyes to what it means to live and love like Jesus. We’ve said it a million times, but if you want your faith to grow, start a church. We get a front-row seat to see how awesome and capable our God is! Want to get involved? Reach out any time and we will get you connected in a way that works best for you!
Here’s how you can pray 🙏
Thank you so much for your continued prayer for Local Church. Be encouraged - He hears you and is answering your prayers!
CLICK HERE to let us know you prayed!
Prayer requests:
- Please pray for the construction and improvements to our building to go smoothly!
- Pray for protection over the positive relationship with our landlords and the congregation at Village of Faith Church.
- We are still asking God for a band and kids team volunteers!
- For our upcoming interest events to be a blessing to our community and to help people discover our church.
- We are applying for grants to cover the costs of making our building accessible to individuals with disabilities. Pray for our proposals to be accepted so that we can be in the 10% of US churches that are accessible!
Answered prayers:
- We brought in $108,000 in donations this month! Our next big financial goal is $50,000 for a salaried position.
- We are approx. 60% funded for our low-impact budget.
- Nick and Sarah (who moved from KC) have shared that they feel so at home here! Our friendship has grown so much and we are continually thankful for them.
- We know that many of you are praying for us personally! We can sense it as we experience God’s peace and blessing on a constant basis.
We have the best sending church in the world!
And we had our first visitors from KC - The Howeys!
Thank you for following us on our journey 🎉
We are looking forward to all that God has for us, for you, and for Long Island! ⛪️🌱
