Building a new church for Crossroads

I received some good news in my inbox today.

At the Wednesday night meeting of the Woodbury Planning Commission, our relocation project (the applications we've made to build and develop the land) got unanimously approved! Yea, God! Now, it all goes to next Wednesday night's meeting of the Woodbury City Council for final approval.

Are we expecting more good news? Absolutely. The Woodbury City Planners are on board and the City Council pretty much approves whatever they recommend. Following next week's meeting we will apply for a building permit and be off and running. We still hope to break ground in a month or so.

Continue to pray for the process. Pray for God's favor next Wednesday and also for favor as we negotiate what's called a 'developer agreement' (a fee we'll have to pay to develop and build). This fee could cripple us or just wound us depending on how gracious the City Planners are. Pray for good negotiations (we're a non-profit church not a developer who will be making lots of money on the property).

This is great news. Things have been stalled for far too long on this project due to some indecisiveness on the part of the Woodbury, MN city council. It has kept our church's direction hanging in the balance. We didn't want to abandon our goal of building this year, but we also didn't want to waste time pursuing that goal if we were going to have to wait 2 years to build.

Our church is simply bursting at the seams, which is a good thing. But if you've studied church growth at all you know that a "full" church is not welcoming to visitors. While we have grown as a church, I believe it has been at a stunted rate because we do not have open seats at optimum hours.

So this is exciting and very good news!

Technorati Tags: Crossroads Church, Crossroads, Phil Print, Pastor Phil Print, Woodbury, Cottage Grove, City Planners, Building Permit, City Council, Planning Commission