Recently, Frontline Church, In Fayetteville, North Carolina, moved into their new venue. We caught up with them to hear more about the story of how they came to finding this spot, as well as how God provided the means for them to move in! Here is what Blake Burrough, one of the leaders, had to say:
“The story is pretty wild. Over the last few months we’ve been on the receiving end of God’s kindness and generosity…”
“The story is pretty wild. Over the last few months we’ve been on the receiving end of God’s kindness and generosity, and it’s changing how we pray and think about him as Father. We’ve only been meeting since April 2021, gathering in a space that was unused on Sundays. We were doing the set-up/tear-down way of church, and were committed to making that work. But God had a surprise for us.
An incredible building came on the market in late September. It had previously been a church that recently closed, with a cafe and daycare sharing the space. Even though the building was underpriced, it was still a huge stretch for us as a very young church. But, through some ‘persons of peace’ connected to our church, God brought the purchase of the venue that much closer to reality. The process of God opening this as a possibility, to us actually moving into the new venue, all happened in the span of about a month and a half. This was very fast, and very surprising.
Through the process God has been so kind to us. The previous church gifted us all of their sound and lighting equipment, another Advance church provided us with chairs. (This type of stuff just does not happen in the church planting world!) There are some updates that need to be made to the building, which we’re currently working on. To fund these updates we set a goal that we hoped to largely raise internally. However, we began getting random, unexpected, external gifts. A church in Oklahoma, whom we had no prior relationship with, had to close their doors, but they felt led by the Spirit to send us the remainder of their funds. So many unexpected gifts came in that, before we could present it to the church, God had already provided 60% of the goal. By the end of the first Sunday we were somewhere in the 90% range of being funded for these updates. We reached the full goal before the following service.
We keep pinching ourselves to make sure what’s happening is real — we’re learning so much about God’s heart. It’s so easy in our day to let pessimism be our default setting. We’re often waiting on the other shoe to drop, with an “I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it” mentality. But we have been reminded that God delights in giving good gifts to His children. This has stirred our faith to pray big prayers for what might seem like small things — because God cares and he’s a Good Father.
Our current prayer is to receive the gifts he’s given us with gratitude and have a sobriety about stewarding them well. We feel a unique calling as a church to be present in the story God is telling and to be present in the stories of those that enter our congregation. Often, they’re stories of people feeling beat-up, broken, and wondering if God would ever want anything to do with them. God loves to wondrously show His steadfast love in these kinds of stories. We’ve experienced it, tasted and seen, and we open our doors with delight to tell our town what God can do.”