Speaker: Pastor Bill Rench (Pastor Ryan Rench’s father, retired former pastor of Calvary Baptist Church) and Wendy Rench, Pastor Ryan Rench’s mother (not Pastor Ryan Rench)
Pastor Bill Rench: Well, we have been wanting to do this for a long time. Even while I was still pastoring, we were hopeful that we would be closer to paying our debt off. We did not quite make that goal before I retired, but Pastor Ryan has picked up the mantle and is carrying it on, so our great hope is to see that debt retired this year. We are not certain God is going to allow that, but we are praying and hoping that is the case. The loan we have now was actually taken out on the expansion, when we expanded the auditorium and built the two-story Sunday school wing and the fellowship hall gymnasium. The key at the beginning was getting land. We found this piece of property, five acres, for $125,000. A lady named Clara Lara had owned the property for years, and she finally decided to sell it as she was getting older, so we were able to purchase it back before land prices went out of sight here. But we had to raise $25,000 for the down payment to get into escrow, and we had to raise it in a matter of weeks, because the property could have been sold to anybody during that period. So we had just a matter of weeks to raise $25,000 from the forty or fifty people we had at that time in our early beginnings, and that was a real challenge to us. At that point we took up some special offerings, and rummage sales and donations and so forth were happening. We had all of that going on. When we moved down here from Oregon, I had pulled down a project car, a two-door 1947 Cadillac that needed restoration, and I decided to sell it and give the proceeds to the building fund as well. That sold pretty quickly. Another individual donated a 1970 Camaro, and we sold that. And Wendy took charge of some garage sales and things, so I will let her explain that a little.
Garage Sales and Spaghetti Dinners
Wendy Rench: Well, I was a stay-at-home mom. We had three children at the time; Ryan was just a year old when we were trying to raise this money. We were being supported by Calvary Baptist Church in Yorba Linda for two years, but it was just the bare minimum, so we did not have any extra money to give to this fund either. He sacrificed when he sold the Cadillac. To me it was not a sacrifice, because when he would turn that thing on in the garage, it would fill the house with a terrible, terrible smell. The exhaust was terrible, and I knew we would never have the money to fix it up. But it was a real sacrifice to him. So I tried to figure out a way we could make money. We were living over in the neighborhood where the Pechanga Reservation casino is now. Church people just started giving me garage sale things, and I kept our garage open for about three weeks, and people just shopped. We were in a neighborhood, and they just came by, and church people kept giving me things, and I would just put them out. We raised $2,000 that way, so it was like, “Okay, that was my part.” I was also going to say that when we built the first auditorium, we had different kinds of fundraisers. The teens gave us a spaghetti dinner at Bill’s garage, and while the church was still a cement floor and two-by-fours, we ate spaghetti there. We had gotten donations from the city, and we raffled them off that night, and we gave the money to help with the $110,000 we raised to build that building. We were just trying to be very, very creative about how we could make money. And we have done it four times. We could do it again.
Pastor Bill Rench: Yeah, we can do it now. That was a very good time for spiritual growth and for trusting God for great things. Our people responded well, and almost all of them were involved in some way in helping raise those funds. In that period our giving was not spectacular. We were a bedroom community, with a lot of young families, and there were not a great number of people with the kind of work where they make huge money. So it was the sacrifices of folks who were mostly common people with ordinary jobs that made this possible, along with the volunteer work so many did in building the buildings. The auditorium in particular was almost completely donated labor. That is why, unbelievably, it cost us only $110,000 to build the auditorium originally: so much was donated labor, and some materials were even donated. That period really brought people together. We were out working on the building every day, and people would show up after work and work for several hours. Those who had a day off would come in and work with us. It was slower getting the job done, but we were able to do it without incurring any more debt. So that was a great time, spiritually and physically, and the camaraderie and all of that was a good thing.
Free to Use It for Ministry
This was something I had the desire to come to while I was still pastoring: to get to the point where we were not spending ten or eleven thousand dollars a month on building payments, and could transfer all that money directly into ministry and related things, to hire an additional staff person, which would be a big help to us at this time, to do more special projects, and to get back to updating some of the things that really need it. Some of our facilities have not had much attention in ten or twelve or fifteen years, and we are getting to the point where things in the building need attention, and we will be able to do those kinds of things. We will be able to do much more as far as outreach and missions are concerned. There are just so many ways we can use that $11,000 a month more effectively than giving it to the bank, so we are excited about that part of it for sure. Nobody wants to be saddled and strapped with debt. We were at the point where it was sometimes very difficult just to meet the budget and carry on ministry. In 1993 there was a big recession, and we had people who had to move away because it was so difficult to find work, as everybody from that era remembers. We even came to the point where we had to send a letter to all our note holders asking whether they would consider donating part of their note, or refinancing it at a lower interest rate, and those kinds of things. We had to appeal to them at that point. We never missed a payment and were never late on any of our responsibilities, but it was really tight for that period. So to get past that, and, the Lord willing, get to the place where that pressure is not going to come up again, is an exciting prospect.
Wendy Rench: We have not had to raise money or build a building and be in this situation in a long time, so a lot of our church people have not experienced what those of us who have been here through these years have. It is a great time for the church to come together. When the church was first being built, people would paint; we were trying to keep the cost down; we made cabinets; we were really all involved. We had to plant all the landscaping in the parking lots and on the property. Everybody was taking part, whether they were giving huge amounts of money or giving their time and energy. Now, after all these years, it is a whole new group of people who have not gone through this the last four times. So it is a really good time, and we will say, “Hey, remember the year 2026, when we gave and became debt-free, and how great that feeling was? We all did it together.” So I am looking forward to seeing what God is going to do.
