Bigger Might Be Better, But It'll Get You Into Lots of Problems

So recently, I started my new job working at Family Community Church in San Jose. FCC is one of the fastest-growing churches in Silicon Valley, which is definately a great thing. I definately feel as though the church is a place that God is using to transform people's lives. There are so many people, in fact, that we have a big problem.

They don't fit.

We tried adding services, but who wants to come to church at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning or 1:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon. Church growth experts always tell you: Maximum seats at optimal invitation hours. You need more empty chairs during weekend services that are at times when people can invite their friends. Which means Sundays from around 9-11. And sometimes Saturday night.

So, my church, FCC, is in the middle of a 12 million dollar building campaign. That might seem like a lot, but keep in mind that a nice, good sized house in this area goes for nearly a million. The whole thing started in October of 2003, when our head pastor, Pastor Bill, started looking for a bigger property to move into, and we found one.

We found a steal of a deal from a company that was going bankrupt and needed cash quick. We bought a GIANT property for 8 million dollars. Ours is worth about 4 million dollars, just to give you an idea. This place is 11 times bigger, and could accomodate a weekly attendance of about 9,000 people. Right now, we're about 2,800.

So we bought it. Because it was like buying a brand new Honda Accord for 5K. It was like, "What's the catch?" But there wasn't one.

Now we needed a loan for 4 million more to buy the place, plus 4 million more to put in seats, build offices, etc, etc. because the place was just a shell of a building. Nothing inside.

But we couldn't get a loan that big. So we raised 2 million dollars through tithing in a few months, and then used that as collateral, and then Bank of America gave us the money. So we have a loan for 8 million, plus the 4 million we're going to get when we sell our place, which we have already done to this other church.

So this is a 12 million dollar thing.

And all in time for Easter 2005.

But wait.

I know what you're thinking. It's already Easter 2005. That's passed? What's going on. Coupla things.

1. The City of San Jose didn't want a church buying a building that large in the middle of an industrial complex. Cities are all about making money, and if FCC occupied prime industrial real estate then a: some commerical merchant, who would pay millions in taxes, couldn't and b: they would get NO money from us, since it's a church and is non-profit. So they denied us what's called a "building permit."

2. So we showed them that legally, they couldn't do what they were doing. Cities cannot deny churches real estate unless they provide a reasonable alternative. Since we were getting the building so cheap, there was nothing they could do.

3. Meanwhile, you can't legally buy a property without a building permit, and the company that wanted to sell was like, "Hello? You buying this or what" So FCC had to agree to pay 50,000 a month as a form of "layaway" for this building until we could purchase it.

4. This went on for six months. That's 300K, out the window. Plus, now we're six months behind.

5. So we finally had the building permit. Now the fire inspector said that we were a convention center, and that the Power Company's Gas Line was too close to our building for it's intended use. So we had to wait another month and pay 80,000 dollars for a specialist to say, "This gas line isn't going to explode." By the way, that same gas line ran underneath my old house that I lived in with Jon in downtown San Jose.

6. Then the price of steel went through the roof. Iraq happened, and all the US and international steel prices tripled because of war-time stuff, like reconstruction from all the bombs we dropped. Kind of like oil, now, reaching 60 dollars a barrel today when normally it's around 40. So we had to re-draw our plans wirth architects using less steel. This took another month.

7. Meanwhile, we haven't built anything in our building. Finally, last month we started building. But then...

8. Fire inspectors inspected our plans and determined that with so many people in one place, it wasn't a church anymore with church code specs, but rather a convention center. This was exactly the opposite of what they'd told us before. So we had to halt construction, build some new fire walls, and get the plans approved.

9. We did everything the city asked, but the person who can approve our plans is on vacation for the next two weeks, so we can't get signed off so we can re-begin construction.

So we're looking at Nov-Dec of this year. And I think maybe even that's pushing it.

It's really quite terrible. I am blogging all this because I have seen now, because I work at this place, the amount of time that Pastor Bill has to spend on this building project. It's more than a full-time job, and he's a got a volunteer staff of about 10 people working on it full-time too.

It's just a shame.