June, 2005

With faith, foresight and high-tech weather forecasting, no one could have predicted what was headed toward central Florida in the fall of 2004. If they could, Pastor Jeff Steffel would sure have liked having a ‘heads-up’ before construction started on their new church building.

Grace Family Church, a Vanguard Partner church, is located in Port St. Lucie, Florida, one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. What use to be farmland and pasture is now a city that has grown from a population of 330 in 1970 to a staggering 104,000 current residents. Planners estimate that within 20 years, the city will reach a build-out population of 340,000, nearly that of modern-day Miami.

 

With an eye toward keeping up with this incredible growth and the church's climbing attendance (currently averaging 700 in attendance every weekend), Pastor Jeff Steffel’s congregation purchased 18 acres back in 1998 for a mere fraction of its worth today. Later, they committed to a building program and began casting vision and raising the millions of dollars required to build a state-of-the-art church facility. Realistically, every pastor anticipates that there might be some hurdles along the way, but they never expected what blew their way in the September of 2004.

Port St. Lucie had not been touched by a major hurricane since Harry Truman was president in 1949. But within three weeks residents experienced a double whammy, a double punch. Hurricane Frances pounded the region with 105-mph winds Labor Day weekend. Only three weeks later tragedy struck again with Hurricane Jeanne pounding this populated area of the Atlantic Florida coast heaping on more destruction and misery. The National Hurricane Center said that had never happened before: two hurricanes, weeks apart, only miles apart.

Raising money for a building projected to cost over $4 million is challenging in the best of times, but trying to accomplish this in the midst of a congregation scrambling to bring their lives back to some normalcy stretched Grace Family Church to a new level of faith and vision. Pastor Jeff says, "Even now, seven months later, we have members who are not back in their homes." However, the commitment and faith of Pastors Jeff and Violet proved what spiritual leaders must do in times of crisis, stand fast and trust God! They did just that—the church responded and made up the financial shortfall in a matter of weeks.

Today, only months since the double storms hit Port St. Lucie the pledges from their capital campaign continue to faithfully flow into the offering buckets. Additionally, in light of cost overruns (common to anyone who tries to build a church building today) the people are giving $400,000 to help the church move into their new beautiful church home in fall 2005. Accomplishing great things for God demands risks, faith, perseverance and a lot of hard work. There are many lessons from the Grace Family Church story---but one worth noting is, "never try to predict the weather, but be prepared for whatever life serves up-- and we all can realize our dreams!"