Big News, A Bigger Story
If you haven’t heard, New City will be moving Sunday gatherings soon!
We have a beautiful new building that is being renovated and prepared for us that could be ready as early as mid-September. It is going to be an amazing space. Our current building at 1015 Riverside Drive is under contract and set to close July 13 with us out of the building no later than July 27.
Those dates don’t exactly line up for the perfect move!
And that means we will need a temporary home for our gatherings.
The “Big News” is that we found a temporary home! I want you to be as excited as I am about the details of where we will be, so be patient and keep reading!
In the summer of 2007, I began sharing with several Middle Georgia pastors about our dreams and desires in planting New City Church. Honestly, the news was not received well by many pastors and church leaders. In fact, some were very negative. Two were incredibly supportive!
I met with one of those pastors at his office. His congregation was quite large and their facilities were amazing! We talked about what I felt the Lord was leading a group of us to do in planting New City. This pastor smiled, seemed genuinely excited, prayed for us and then introduced me to some of his staff. When he introduced me to one of them, Beth, he asked her to take me to their children’s rooms and walk me through. “Give Keith anything that they will need to get started,” he told her.
And she did.
The truth is, I didn’t know what we needed! So Beth walked through and began telling me what we needed and grabbed it, not from storage or some junk collecting room, but from the rooms and things they used every Sunday. When we finished, my Xterra, with seats folded, was PACKED, floor to ceiling and front to back. There was barely room for me to drive. I cried driving home with all the stuff. How gracious, right!?
A week or so before our first service together as New City Church, that pastor called me. He was once again incredibly supportive and sounded so excited for us! He told me that he had been talking with their people about New City and a group of them wanted to help us on our first Sunday. They wanted to handle ALL of the service areas so that our people could just show up and enjoy their first service.
I clearly remember them walking down the Second Street sidewalk toward the Cox Capitol Theater that Sunday morning. It was amazing! They were all wearing black New City Church t-shirts that THEY had made for the day. They rolled in, set up our kids areas, made coffee, greeted people, handed out bulletins, taught our children, held the babies, and at the end of the day helped us clean up and load up. Then they gave me a neatly folded stack of black New City Church t-shirts for our people.
Even now I am overwhelmed with that day and their generosity. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes.
In a few years we would have our own space, 533 Cherry Street in downtown Macon. Beth, who helped me load my car with kids ministry items and her husband, Dave were feeling called to plant a church. They reached out to me to talk. Of all the places they could have gone, they felt that God might be calling them to downtown Macon.
They needed a place to gather with their people.
I knew a place – OURS!
So Beth and Dave launched a new church plant downtown, in our building on Sunday nights. Beth and Dave would eventually sense God calling them back to Virginia where they would plant a church in their home town. That church has blown up! God has been so gracious there. We remain long distance friends and supporters.
Over the years, almost 16 of them now, I have talked with that pastor from time to time. He spoke with a group of Acts 29 church planters here in our current space. I have seen him help plant and launch many more churches in that 16 years. He, and his church are, for me, a picture of what churches should be together – helpers, encouragers, supporters, and givers.
As we began our search weeks ago for a temporary home, he was maybe the fourth pastor or church leader we had spoken with. His church was the second we toured as a staff, but there is no comparison with how we were received. I don’t mean that as a negative to anyone we talked with, we had some great conversations and a great tour in another building. I mean to say that this pastor was almost GIDDY when he welcomed us and walked us through his facilities, the same facilities I walked through almost 16 years ago.
And like that day, 16 years ago, with seemingly great joy, he told our staff, “Whatever we have is yours. Whatever space we have, you can use.” He even told me, as he showed me his office, how honored he would be if I would use his office and desk to pray and go over my sermon before we gathered. He told us, as we ended our tour, “There is one catch to this. You owe us nothing and we don’t want to take anything from you. It is all yours to use as long as God has you here.”
That’s what I want to be when I grow up.
So, what an incredible thing for me to announce that beginning July 23, at 5:00pm, New City Church will gather at Christ Chapel, Macon, 170 Starcadia Circle off Bass Road at I-75.
If you read this far, I hope that you are as blown away as I have been.
Thank you John Wood for modeling church generosity and partnership for me. I promise it has not been lost on me. You and all of Christ Chapel have been such a blessing to New City Church, and through us you will be a blessing to many more.
