Last Sunday, August 8th, we had a celebration service at our church, rejoicing in being debt-free for the first time in twenty years. In today’s video I want to walk through some of the history of our church that I covered in the sermon that day, then talk about the Be Debt-Free offering goals and look at phase two, some of the projects we had already been working on leading up to this. Hi, church, and welcome back to this week’s video. If you are new here, I am Pastor Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California.
Our History
In 1987, when I was just a few months old, Dad moved down from planting a successful church up in Oregon. His pastor down here in Yorba Linda had noticed that the 15 Freeway had just been completed and that this little bedroom community between San Diego and Los Angeles was about to explode in population and was going to need a church. So Calvary Baptist Church of what was then Rancho California was started. Just a handful of people began meeting, and for about five years we were in a school. Then, I think in 1991 or 1992, we were able to purchase the property we are on now, five acres, and build our very first building, which is now our kids’ wing. About five years after that, we built the existing sanctuary, the center portion of it, with big, beautiful white columns out front and a nice, beautiful white steeple. We paid for that and built it as we went, with volunteer labor from within the church. Then, as the church continued to grow, around 2006 we had to take out a $2.4 million loan, as I understand it. At that point we could no longer simply cash-flow the job, take out a small loan, and do the work ourselves as we had in previous building projects. That was about twenty years ago. We built the two-story part of the building and the fellowship hall, and then we moved services into the fellowship hall, and during that year or so we expanded the sanctuary and added a foyer on the front, keeping the old brick facade from the original building; it is in our church foyer now. We completed that expansion, moved back into the expanded sanctuary, and have been in these buildings ever since. For twenty years we have been paying as much as possible on that loan while enjoying these incredible buildings and being thankful that God has allowed us to use them.
Paying It Off
Finally, last year we were right within striking distance, around $200,000 left to pay it off. Our thirty-ninth anniversary was coming up, and it seemed God just wanted me to say, “Let us just knock this thing out and be done with this debt once and for all.” So we had some special meals, and I cast the vision for what it would look like for our church to be debt-free and to put those funds back into ministry instead of sending $9,000 a month to the banks. We owed it, and we were certainly going to pay the debt, but I was just done with it. So leading up to the thirty-ninth anniversary, we planned our Be Debt-Free Sunday, and we saw the largest one-time offering in our church’s history, about $139,000 given in that one day, plus one-year commitments going into phase two once phase one, our debt retirement, was paid off. Since May, our thirty-ninth anniversary, as we have entered our fortieth year of ministry in Temecula, we have been working at bringing that debt down to zero. Just a couple of weeks ago, God allowed us, with extra giving that came in, to have enough in our building fund to pay off the mortgage fully, instead of making just the minimum payments we had been making. That lets us enter phase two, with some capital improvements and some staff changes we have been praying God would allow us to make. So last Sunday was our celebration of how good God is, a kind of Thanksgiving service in the middle of summer. It does not have to be November for it to be Thanksgiving; you can be thankful any day of the year. We had the Be Debt-Free celebration, burned the note and all of that, and it was an exciting service. But our thirty-ninth anniversary back in May was the big push. I think it was on the Monday after that Be Debt-Free Sunday in May that I showed some of the upcoming projects and plans, and you can go back and watch that video for a more detailed look. What we presented to the church was that phase two, after becoming debt-free, would go toward staff, stability, and souls.
Souls and Staff
The souls part was for increased outreach events and missions work, and we have already been able to do some of that. Just last week we were able to send $1,000 to a church in Riverside, and we were able to help a family in our church. On the staff side were three more behind-the-scenes items. First, Brother Zach’s salary, raised to get him to a living wage here in California. Second, eventually we want to take on a youth pastor. Brother Alex Delid is a staff intern right now, working part-time. The church is not putting out much cash, but we are covering his medical expenses, housing, and utilities in exchange for his part-time work. After a year we will see about a longer commitment as youth pastor, and that is where our Be Debt-Free income will help cover his salary. The third area is retirement accounts for the pastoral staff, 403(b) nonprofit retirement accounts. We have never had that in the past, but after Dad retired, we wanted to eventually put that in place for future staff.
Stability
So that is the souls and staff side. The stability side is about updating our aging properties. The newest parts of our buildings are twenty years old, so I expect things to start breaking down, and we will need to expand some things, fix some things, and rebuild some things, and that is okay. We have already started on some of it. The stability side includes some interior renovations and exterior changes. What we have already done is our church printer, one of the things we mentioned in the booklet, which we have since been able to purchase. Our lease was up, and we looked into Sharp, Ricoh, Canon, and something else I do not remember. We have used all of those and have not been super pleased with them, but we settled on a gorgeous, brand-new Konica Minolta bizhub, I think the C5501 series or whatever it is. It is brand-new this year, and we are absolutely loving it so far. It is not “happy wife, happy life”; I think it is “happy secretary, happy life.” This is Marcela, and she is so happy with our new printer. We are on a one-rate plan with Konica Minolta: unlimited color prints for one flat monthly fee. We are really, really thankful to Brother J.R. in our church, a Konica Minolta tech, who helped connect us with that, and really thankful for the printer.
The next project we put money toward is something our interns have been working on all summer: they built a brand-new storage shed for our decorations. The decorations were upstairs in a room beside the youth room, but we needed that room for Brother Alex’s office, so we built the shed outside, plenty big for future growth, and we are very thankful for it. If you work construction, do not look at it too closely, because it was definitely built by first-timers. But it is sturdy; you give it a smack and say, “That ain’t going nowhere,” so we know it is secure. It is just not the most beautiful building, and that is okay. Phase two covered not only the construction of that building but also the furnishings of Brother Alex’s office, and that will continue as we keep furnishing it. Next, the interns renovated my office, as you see behind me. We had a wall that divided this into two areas, and the other video studio we used to film in was only about seven feet wide. So we took down this interior wall behind me, patched up the ceiling, and made it one big room. It will be for recording videos and for counseling and meetings, but mainly it is this big because we want to start a couples’ class. We have been talking about this class for a couple of years. Once Brother Alex gets a new helper with the teens, Brother Zach and Miss Shay will be able to move out of that class and work with the singles in our Rooted young adults class, and my wife and I will start a brand-new class for young married couples and others not connected to a class right now. That married class needed somewhere to meet, and this room will be the place. I think it is going to be the most comfortable of all; you see the couches and soft chairs behind me. Renovating and furnishing this room is part of what phase two will cover.
Another behind-the-scenes project in the works is a new sign. This was one of the biggest ones we presented: a new sign and an entrance renovation. We have been working on it for months with the landscape architect, and we just want to get it right, so there is a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of drawings back and forth. We are trying to get the sign right first, and then there is back-and-forth with the city about ordinances and setbacks and all that. So we are making progress. It is not fast, but it is in the works at least. Another area for which some of the Be Debt-Free funds are already earmarked is missions. Our missions revival is coming up, and it is partially, but not entirely, covered by special offerings. Then there are our Patagonia trip and our Israel trip, a couple of major trips coming up, and some of the funds will go toward those. We also want to update our properties with exterior upgrades and new paint, and maybe a new RV pad up top, rather than planning for a full trailer or a house or mobile home up there. We want to start by getting it graded and ready for an RV at least, and maybe get a travel trailer for when missionaries come through. And we want to set some funds aside for big maintenance failures, such as ACs going out. So far so good, but we do not want those things to turn into emergencies. We have money set aside in the bank that could cover about two months of church expenses, but beyond that we do not have much of an emergency fund, so I think it would be wise to store up a little in case a water line breaks or the roof leaks or air conditioners go out, those kinds of things.
So there is a rough sketch of what is coming up in the year or so ahead. All of this is to say that it is all glory to God for His provision and His blessings. Thank you, church, for being a giving church. I love it. It is wonderful to be part of, and it is a great relief to go into our fortieth year completely debt-free. We are so thankful to God, and all glory goes to Him. We want to use His money for His glory. God bless you, church, and we will see you in the next video.
