Our two key strategies, “from the ground up” and “from the inside out”, represent our best summation of how we believe Jesus builds church.  Respectively, he starts from the beginning and re-teaches us about God and ourselves.  And as well, he begins from within the heart and lets true change be driven from the inside out.  The “from the ground up” strategy is a double entendre in that we not only start from the beginning in teaching but also begin from the ground level with our children in truly discipling them to love and adore Jesus.  We seek to free them to worship and serve Him with great joy and in Spirit and truth, as He so desires.  

In our ministry approach, we have built a “loop” from the ground up, a loop we are presently beginning to finalize and close.  We have been, and are currently, leading our young people through consecutive ministries that approach discipling in age appropriate, as well as psychologically and socially appropriate, ways.  We begin with the youngest in children’s ministry (JaM) and then progress them through our junior high and high school ministries (NEXT), college ministry (FOCUS) and post college ministry (Segue).  Those who are called from the outside enter the process at their age and situation-appropriate places.  We recognize there are unique spiritual needs at each stage of development and that by meeting those spiritual needs, growth is natural, progressive, and profound.

Our whole church leadership, beginning with our eldership, fully recognizes that our work is to equip everyone “for works of ministry that the body of Christ might be built up”.  We don’t try to be different for the sake of being different, but I do believe our attempts to exactly emulate Jesus as best we can does indeed lead our ministries to look and feel somewhat different from many ministries and completely different from some others.  We are not here to entertain, we are not here to serve as a place for “Christians” to come punch their proverbial church-duty clocks, and we are not in the business of babysitting lukewarm church members.  We are in the business of producing kingdom soldiers, church workers, and devoted children of God.  And, we do it by all possible means.

We are now at the point of seeing our college graduates from FOCUS and in Segue Ministry begin to step up more and more to join the rest of church leadership and to assume important roles in leading and driving all our ministries.  Batons are and will continue to be passed in the coming years as these disciples take on the roles of ministry leaders as well as evangelists and elders.  We already have some who began in our teen ministry now leading ministries and small groups themselves.  We now see some who began in our children’s ministry leading in our college ministry.  We have some who began in our college ministry leading in overall church ministry now. The loop is closing.

With the loop closing, the “assembly line” will now be complete and a much more aggressive outward, growth focus will necessarily be dictated.  And now to do that, we must, as a church, to step up and step out in our mission and we need to finance it.

Our net giving has indeed risen over the years, but as we have intentionally distributed giving outside of the general contribution in ways to FOCUS and NEXT as well as to offerings for the poor and for India, our general contribution has been flat while infrastructural needs have continued to grow. Our staff salaries (including the FOCUS staff) are generally and mostly paid through the general contribution. By design, we are not a church that pays high salaries. Period. Our ministry staff feels our honorariums to be generous though and no one is complaining. But we all still must live and function in a world that costs and in lives that can sometimes accrue lots of expenses serving others. We are however very honored and thankful to be supported by the contributions of the church to have more time to do our calling. There have been precious few raises in the 12 years of our existence. We have actually had more salaries cut permanently or temporarily than we have had raised. We work really hard to squeeze every dime to do as much as we possibly can. And, most of the ministers are bi-vocational, working additional jobs to make ends meet and to not be a burden on the church. That will continue, of course.

But, as more young men and women are called up to do ministry and as some of these young ministers try to begin to build families and so forth, their salaries will by necessity have to be raised or they will have to leave their paid ministry positions to get secular jobs to fulfill other roles they might otherwise feel equally called to. That doesn’t mean they won’t still be involved in ministry but those who work full-time secular jobs know the challenge of doing much of any ministry “on the side” let alone to lead a ministry and bear the daily burdens that go with it.

Right now, we need to begin giving some minimal support to several of our new ministry leaders. We need to give another minister a substantial raise. We need to further fund the growth of the Wylie church plant. We need to prepare to support the beginning of our University of North Texas ministry (starting January). We also will likely begin a ministry internship program in FOCUS this next year to more aggressively raise up ministers. We also have increased health insurance costs coming up and will need to help pay for rent and additional space as well as for supplies and equipment in Wylie. We currently need to buy a commercial grade refrigerator and a couple more commercial grade vacuum cleaners. In the next couple of years we’re also targeting beginning ministries to Richland College and later to Eastfield College. It’s important for the church to understand that there are always things we can do if we have the funds and just because you’re not hearing fund-raising sermons does not mean the needs are not there. We just try to avoid too much discussion about money and giving lest we over-burden the hearts and pocket-books of members. But, it does have to be talked about and the church does have to be informed.

The elders definitely feel the church is generous in giving.  Just recently one of the elders commented, and the others agreed, that they are amazed at how much the church has given in response to requests and challenges.  So, there's certainly no intention to imply the church is not generous.  The intention is only to let the church know that by raising the bar some and sacrificing some, we can do even more of what is so important to all of us.