What led to the decision to relocate the church?
As we approached the issue of relocating, we started -not with our feelings -but with our beliefs.
We believe Christ is the head and owner of the church.
We believe that, when Christ gave the Great Commission to His followers, He did not exclude us.
We believe that heaven and hell are real.
We believe that what we do and don’t do matters both here and for eternity.
So the question before us was not what do we want to do, what would make us comfortable or what would be easy; but How Can We Best Impact our Community and World with the Gospel!
We looked at our current circumstances and saw that we were in the middle of a rapidly growing community while at the same time rapidly running out of space. With these thoughts in mind, our leadership brought before the church the idea of starting a “Future Vision Fund” -which was approved by the church around seven or eight years ago. The idea was that we did not know exactly what we would do, but we knew we would need to do something and would need money to do it. Then, around five years ago, we began looking at options to expand on our current land. We considered expanding current facilities and building lower down on our existing property. Despite exhausting every available options we could envision, nothing made sense in light of the needs for additional seating and parking that would be required. So, we were left with a couple options; we could be content with where we were and tell God we had done all we planned to do for His kingdom, or we could look for new ground and a new home for Willow Hills Baptist Church. After praying, getting counsel from other pastors, and considering our options, we were left with the conclusion that the best thing we could do to set the church up for continued future impact was to relocate.
In making this decision, we took comfort in looking back on our churches story. It began downtown nearly 80 years ago, then the people built a new building so they could continue to grow. After decades downtown, they purchased our current property so they could “be in a place where they could continue to reach people with the gospel.” So our decision is really a continuation of the vision and practices of our church’s nearly 80 year history.