MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!
Dear Shepherd’s Church,
As you know, by the Lord’s grace, we have been faithfully teaching, preaching, administering the sacraments, and creating Gospel content for the Lord’s Church for the last four and a half years. Our church, which began in my carriage house, has grown from just a few people to more than seventy - eighty weekly worshippers, with a membership community that is pushing nearly ninety percent! We have seen close to forty baptisms in these first four years. We have seen marriages healed. We have seen men and women growing deeper in their walk with Christ. And I believe that we are just getting started with all God has for us!
With this in mind, the next chapter for The Shepherd’s Church appears to be opening. This week, our landlord contacted us about the possibility of taking on two additional units. For context, this would mean that we have the opportunity to double our current space, have a sanctuary that will hold 200 chairs, have a dedicated fellowship hall where we can do regular meals and events, as well as more classrooms, storage, and space for offices for future staff, when the Lord opens the door for us to hire an associate or executive pastor. This isn't just growth; this is a leap into a future where our capacity to welcome, disciple, and equip God’s people for His Kingdom work in New England will double to the glory of God.
WHY A BIGGER SANCTUARY?
There are several reasons for this. First, if you have attended services on the Lord’s Day recently, you will notice that in our current space we are running out of room. This means that we have little ability to welcome new families and guests in our current set up. And because of this, we have a cap on the number of families we can disciple, which means there is a limit to how far our church can take the great commission in our region. For this reason, we need more space.
Second, we want to be a church that plants churches. This means we want to raise up pastors, elders, and church planters who can begin new Gospel works in our commonwealth and region. To do this, we cannot send those men out with nothing and expect new churches to pop into existence ex nihilo. Instead, we need to be able to send those men out with enough people and resources to be successful in a very spiritually dark and expensive culture. Church planting is extremely difficult in any region. Church planting in New England is on an entirely different level. So to ensure the success of future planters, we would like to send them out with enough people to have a fully functioning church on day one, enough resources to have their own sustainable budget, and enough elders and deacons to ensure the church is healthy from the top to the bottom.
From our research, the kind of churches that healthily plant more faithful churches, as well as support those churches with people and resources, are congregations with 200 to 300 people and healthy vibrant sessions and consistories (The elder board and diaconate). This means we need more space. We need more space in order to disciple more people, raise up more elders and deacons, so that we can send them out to do similar works in other towns and cities in this state. This leads to our third point.
Third, we need more space because we are a very regional church. We have men and women driving from 45 minutes to an hour in all four directions. Our goal would be to grow to the point we can plant churches all over this state so that men and women will have local churches in their area to worship, without having to drive nearly an hour to be a part of a faithful community. Now, do not get me wrong, I am thrilled that men and women have found a home here. We are a church that prioritizes faithfulness in a faithless culture. But, our goal has to be bigger than one congregation. We need hundreds of churches in this state, thousands in this region, and hundreds of thousands in this country to put a dent in the rot that we see occurring. For this reason, we need more space to grow, and make progress on these goals, so that we can see the name of Christ made much of in this region!
WHY A FELLOWSHIP HALL?
If you have been around our church for any length of time you will know that we have two goals. We want to a Biblically faithful Church in every respect. And, we want to be a church where you can thrive in relationship with other people. For far too long churches have prioritized one of these, but not both of these. Because of this, we have seen relational churches in our world that have shallow theology. And we have seen theologically robust churches that are cold and aloof when it comes to relationship. We think a church should do both well, just like Jesus said when He summarized the entire law in two commands: Love God with everyone and love your neighbor as yourself.
For this reason, we want dedicated space to foster and build relationships. We want a space that is set up and ready to go for meals, events, classes, and other functions that our current set up doesn’t afford. Furthermore, with the additional storage upstairs, and additional classrooms, this addition of space signifies a significant leap forward in our ministry capabilities— adding spaces where we can feast, teach, learn, and grow in faith and fellowship. together
A CALL TO ACTION
This is a day worth celebrating! This is a day where we can clap our hands and thank our God for His provision! And, if all goes well we can begin construction sometime in the Summer or Fall.
This is where we need your help. To bring this project to fruition, we cannot do it alone. This will require not just faith, but also some good old fashion hard work, ownership, and buy in. This will be an all hands on deck kind of moment where we all give sacrificially to see this accomplished, we all labor and use our gifts sacrificially to see this accomplished, and in the end, we all feast and celebrate like we never have before when this is accomplished!
In the meantime, celebrate with us. This is very good news! Also, pray that the Lord would open every door and make our way prosper as we seek to make His Gospel known. Finally, would you give sacrificially to see this project become successful. A new fund (The Building Fund) has been added to our giving tab on the website and on the app. Every dollar that you give to this fund will go towards getting our new sanctuary fully operational so that we can worship and grow for years to come. Also, for the next several weeks, we will be announcing this special offering in our Lord’s Day gatherings.
CONCLUSION
Pray. Give. Help. Be a part of this extraordinary chapter in our church's history. Let us come together as a Church, united in Christ, locking arm to arm in our vision to see New England filled with the Gospel of Jesus, and with the Lord’s help, let us make this vision a reality.
For the glory of God and the growth of His Kingdom.
Kendall
