Pastor Pat Jeffrey knows it’s going to take a lot of materials and a lot of money to build the new Grace Community Church, but he’s not afraid to throw in something he has plenty of – faith.”Everything we do is a matter of faith,” Jeffrey said. “Being a church, we have to function on the spiritual plane of faith.” He said he was recently asked the question, “How much faith does it take to build a building if you have all the money in hand?” His answer: “It takes no faith.” Regardless of having faith, money is the one part of the equation that his church does not have yet.Jeffrey said Grace Community’s new 10,000-square-foot church is estimated to cost about $2.3 million, which they plan to raise through a capital campaign to members. Once plans are finalized, they will present all the facts and figures to the congregation, and hope that members will contribute to the project.Grace Community Church is close to presenting a finalized version of its conceptual plan to its congregation. “We have hired an architect from RTA Architecture to help us with a conceptual building plan for our future building site,” Jeffrey said. “The next step with the architect is to move from the conceptual plans to the more technical [type] plans.” But even before building, a church needs the land. Grace Community jumped that hurdle when it closed on 35.5 acres of land on Stapleton Road, just west of Falcon High School. “We have been to the county with the conceptual preliminary plans and there were no red flags or red lights. They just said the normal things,” Jeffrey said.Some area churches are not as lucky as Grace Community, but are hopeful. Greg Tencer, facilities coordinator for St. Benedicts Catholic Church, said they are “in the final process of getting the deed to the land” for their future building site. St. Benedicts owns 20 acres of property in the Santa Fe Springs housing development.The Catholic group currently meets in the Falcon Middle School. Tencer said the church expects to obtain the deed within the next couple months, and the next step is to come up with a conceptual design and a capital campaign. He said a visual concept is necessary to raise the funds needed to build it. “We will come up with a basic, rough concept to put in front of people,” Tencer said. “Something to look at and something to dream about.”Although St. Benedicts is still a long way off from starting the actual building process, Tencer agrees that the cost of building materials can be volatile. But he said his church will plan the best they can to come up with an estimated cost when the time comes. “You have to build into your budget when you actually plan to form the construction and apply the inflation factor to it; then you make your best estimate of what that would be,” Tencer said. “At times, it exceeds what you expect, and sometimes it is less than what you expect.”Pastor Tim Singleton of New Horizons Lutheran Church isn’t even thinking about conceptual plans or capital campaigns. He is more focused on building a congregation. Singleton and his family recently moved to Falcon from Billings, Mont., to start a new Lutheran mission church.Although the church is just a few months old, Singleton doesn’t deny that his church has thought about the future. “We are so new, but we are talking about buying land, probably in the fall,” he said. “And then be building within the next two to three years.”The expense of land and the rising cost of materials are of some concern to Singleton, but like other area churches, he has faith that it will all fall into place. “We are just going to do it,” he said. “You just do what you have to do.” Singleton also is confident the necessary funds will be available. “When it does come time to build, there’s money available to help us do that.” New Horizons Lutheran Church currently meets in the Woodmen Hills Elementary School and is primarily funded by the national Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is based in Chicago, Ill.For now, the churches have adopted that will “wait and see” mentality. Jeffrey said, “Take a step today, and God will reveal what we are supposed to do tomorrow.”
