subject: A Trip For The Ministry [print this page] Almost two years ago, I felt led of God to search for some land. If you know me very well, you know I know zero about real estate. I know a lot about basketball and fishing and the Bible, and that is about it. So I called on a group of individuals (many are listed here in your bulletins today; I wont go into all the names) and I told them some general parameters, some goals, some areas that we would consider building a church. Sure enough, they went out and for two years, this group worked day in, day out, trying to find a tract of land for the church.
This land team was led by David Hardesty and Michael Wilkins, and they finally found the tract of land in Las Colinas, about 75 to 80 acres, great location, and we thought, Surely, this is going to be it. In fact, we were prepared to bring it to the church and we thought, What could we buy this tract of land for? and the cheapest, the cheapest we could buy this tract of land for here in Las Colinas, was $5 million in cash. No finance, now. $5 million in cash! I was born at night, but not last night, and I knew our church could not afford that, and there was no way we could get into a situation like that. We would be paying for that land from now until the Lord comes back.
So we kind of backed off it. We still began to pray about it. At that time, in Gods sovereignty, I went to a conference in Chicago, Illinois, at a church called Willow Creek Community Church. Willow Creek Community Church is the largest church in America. It is, in Ed Young Fellowship opinion, the healthiest church in America. Its pastor is named Bill Hybels, who I consider the number one church growth expert in the world today, and he was teaching a conference on leadership. He had heard about
The Fellowship of Las Colinas and miraculously, he invited Owen Goff and me to have lunch with him, along with a few pastors, in his office, and he began to talk to us about his church. As we began to compare statistics a little bit (and I am not telling you this to brag, just to show you what God is doing), our church, The Fellowship of Las Colinas, is ahead of where Willow Creek Community Church was at this point in history. Willow Creek Community Church is 17 years of age.
