2030 VISION

Over the next 7 years, we envision serving around 1,500 people weekly, with thriving, multi-generational ministries focused on discipleship. We aim to launch a local church plant, raise Christmas Offerings exceeding $300,000 annually, and eliminate all existing debt to double our outreach funds.

Journey Towards our Goal of $4.5M Progress Check: 100%

Key Characteristics

KEY CHARACTERISTICS

OF THE VISION STATEMENT

VISION STATEMENT: We are a multi-generational church equipped with the Word to make disciples, plant churches, and reach the unreached locally and globally.

MULTI-GENERATIONAL

MULTI-GENERATIONAL

We emphasize every generation with our ministry offerings with an inter-generational approach because we are a church family committed to generational impact. 

EQUIPPED WITH THE WORD

EQUIPPED WITH THE WORD

We are Bible-driven and trained with the Word aimed toward believers because we are doers of the Word not just hearers. 

MAKE DISCIPLES

MAKE DISCIPLES

We make disciples through building personal relationships, living in community, and engaging in thriving ministries because we are participants, not spectators.

PLANT CHURCHES

PLANT CHURCHES

We mobilize our people to launch gospel-centered churches because the local church is God’s primary means for His people to live out the Great Commission. 

REACH THE UNREACHED

REACH THE UNREACHED

We sacrificially participate in local and global outreach meeting physical and spiritual needs to reach those who have not heard the gospel because God’s heart is for all the nations to worship Him.

 

IMPLEMENTING THE VISION WITH AN EXPANSION

 

Over the next three years, our goal is to raise $4,500,000 to fund the Expansion Project. With an expanded facility, we will be able to provide additional ministry offerings for all generations (multi-generational), which will offer greater opportunities to equip people with the Word (equipped with the Word). In addition, having more space will increase our discipleship effectiveness by providing more intentional teacher-to-student ratios across our ministries (make disciples). An expanded facility will also allow more time to develop a church planting strategy and will provide additional people to be launched in our first church plant (plant churches). Finally, with more people, our giving capacity to local and global outreach ministries will greatly increase (reach the unreached).

OUR PLAN

 

 

 

 

OUR JOURNEY

We are so thankful for the countless people who have used their God-given gifts and abilities to make the vision of Pennington Park Church become a reality. God is doing a faithful work in and through this body to know Jesus and make Him known.

OUR GOAL

Our goal is to raise $4,500,000 over three years (2024, 2025, and 2026) to fund the Expansion Project.

FAQS


Average attendance has grown by 75% since 2021. We are now consistently serving over 975 adults and children on a Sunday morning. To accommodate the growth, we have already purchased two mobile classrooms and added additional chairs in the sanctuary over the years. Even though the maximum capacity of the building is about 1,250 people (910 in the sanctuary over two services and 350 total children in children’s ministry), the well-documented 80% capacity rule, which states that when attendance exceeds 80% of the building capacity the space feels full resulting in visitors struggling to be retained and attendance begins to plateau, informs us that we are quickly reaching capacity. In the 4th quarter of 2023 alone, we reached 80% capacity or more, 35% of the time in either the first or second worship service, and 60% in children’s ministry. Therefore, the proposed Expansion will provide a more effective solution for the capacity challenges. For more data on our attendance numbers since 2021, over the years please review it here.

Yes, you will need to resubmit your commitment with a new commitment card. If you have given money already to the Impact Campaign, there will be a way to notify us on the new commitment card.

While we are pleased with the work our original contractor did on our current building, their expansion proposal was outside our price range. We sought another proposal from a reputable contractor and began discussing some ways to trim costs. In addition, someone from our congregation worked with another contractor and provided an additional estimate. The two new estimates were very similar in price and both considerably lower than the first estimate.

One contractor has invested considerable time and thought in helping us think through how we can construct the expansion for the same square footage as originally proposed for less money without compromising ministry functionality or quality. Significant savings were found in the following:

  • Hold off on the proposed canopy: $385,000
  • Materials and labor costs were lower than the prior contractor: $440,000
  • Reduced costs for furniture, equipment, audio, video, and lighting: $200,000
  • Other minor changes: $75,000

Together, these savings exceed $1 Million without compromising quality or ministry function.

The expansion will enable us to grow by 50%. Our vision has never been to be the “biggest church on the block” but to focus on faithfulness and allow the Lord to handle the growth (1 Cor. 3:6). The expansion is to enable us to build out our ministry model more deeply and thus make more disciples of Jesus as the Lord draws more and more people to PPC. The size of the expansion was determined by two factors:

First, the financial cost of the expansion is on the top end of what we believe we can afford while being wise financially. With our current debt (see FAQ below), we believe it would be unwise to add additional long-term debt.

Second, we believe growing by 50% would be an enormous challenge to our current shepherding and discipleship model. Having just experienced a more than 50% growth over the last three years, we know how difficult it is to maintain church health with a large influx of new people. With our commitment to being faithful driving our decision-making, we believe the most important question is not how large of a church should we become but what kind of church are we becoming. Thus, we believe a 50% increase will allow us to grow at a rate that will not compromise faithfully shepherding and discipleship.

While adding a third worship service is the most cost-effective option for addressing the capacity restraints, it presents a number of other challenges that lead us to conclude this is not the best option for our next step as a church:

  • Congregationally Polarizing: There are many on both ends of the spectrum who are for and who are against three services. Congregational unanimity is not a necessity, but congregational harmony is. We believe adding a third service would create turmoil to our beautiful unity due to the polarization of adding a third service. At this point, it would not be wise to pursue.
  • Erode Our Healthy Church Culture: One of the healthiest aspects of our church culture is the relational connectedness and robust fellowship. Adding a third service would impact this aspect by shortening the fellowship times in between services and those who attend the first service would not be able to fellowship with those who attend the third service. In addition, the worship service length of time would be shortened to accommodate adding an additional service, thus impacting the culture of our worship services. Adding a third service would most likely foster a “crowd mentality” that easily leads to a spectator disposition rather than a “church family mentality” with a participatory disposition.
  • Volunteer and Church Staff Burnout Risk: Adding an additional worship service would demand staffing it with additional volunteers. While this is not an insurmountable task, it would require many in our congregation to increase their serving capacity and, for some (worship team, tech team, etc.), it would lead to serving longer on that particular Sunday. The current pulse on our volunteers is that many are already serving at their fullest capacity. Pushing to ensure another service is fully staffed with volunteers runs the risk of burnout.
  • Building Restraints Would Still Exist: While adding a third service would address some of the building restraints in some of our ministries, it would not address others. For example, student ministries meet on Sunday evenings and are already nearing full capacity in the MPR and lobby. Women’s discipleship ministry, which meets throughout the week, is at full capacity. Adult equip classes cannot be offered on Sunday mornings on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, the mobile classrooms are not an ideal environment for ministry thus impacting ministry

We have $4.1 million in debt from constructing the current church building. The elder’s debt position is informed by Biblical principles. Ultimately, debt is a wisdom issue (see Debt Position and Debt Retirement Plan for more details on the elder’s stance). Throughout the Bible, there are warnings related to debt as well as verses that view debt as an investment. For our church, our goal is to retire the debt completely by the end of 2030. The following are reasons why we believe we should prioritize an expansion and then church planting ahead of retiring the debt:

First, our current debt includes an interest rate of 4.6%, which is far below the current market. Therefore, it seems wise and prudent to raise funds to pay for the expansion in cash rather than to eliminate our current debt.

Second, expanding first will result (Lord willing) in increased attendance. This will allow us to have more people to collectively and aggressively eliminate the debt by 2030 while also making more disciples with an expanded facility through the expansion.

Third, this allows us to focus on living out our vision to make more disciples and church plant while we pay down the debt. First eliminating the debt would not allow us to expand and make more disciples of Jesus and would delay planting churches.

Please view the Debt Position and Debt Retirement Plan for more details on the plan to eliminate all existing debt by the end of 2030.

A key aspect of one of our church’s core values “sent and sending” is the conviction to church plant. We seek to follow what was modeled throughout the book of Acts as the early church first grew in number and expanded (Acts 2:47; 4:4; 5:14; 6:1; 6:7) then multiplied to other areas of gospel need (Acts 8:4-5; 9:31; 11:19). Throughout the New Testament, we see planting churches as the primary means for accomplishing the Great Commission. Therefore, we are committed to launching gospel-centered churches for years to come.

Creating a church planting plan and vision will take time. This involves dedicated times of prayer, communicating the vision church-wide, identifying a lead church planter, recruiting the core startup team, researching the location to plant, assembling the equipment and resources needed, and equipping those being sent out. Therefore, we desire to dedicate 2025 toward developing the church planting plan and vision and then launching our first church plant in 2026, Lord willing.

We believe church planting will become an integral part of our identity as a church and a means of spiritual growth. Those that will be sent out from among us to plant will create leadership and service opportunities for others. While church planting is not an effective strategy to solve capacity restraints, it will help create a bit more space for newcomers. In addition, if capacity is reached after the expansion is complete, planting churches establishes another location to encourage others to attend for gospel-centered ministry.

YOUR NEXT STEPS

Your Next Steps

Pray. Engage. Commit.