5 Years

Yesterday we celebrated the 5 year anniversary of the Downtown Church. Along with celebrating the DTC's 5th anniversary we celebrated closing on our church building. We are now proud owners of 323 East Locust Street in the East Village of Des Moines.

Being married to the pastor gives me a unique perspective on the whole celebration. For the last 5 1/2 years I have driven around the downtown area with my husband hour after hour looking for buildings to rent or buy, land to purchase. In fact, most of our date nights would include a wonderful dinner followed by driving. We both enjoy driving around and talking anyway, so we put our date nights to good use and would drive around the downtown area looking for the perfect spot for our church to meet. Dan would see a building, we would climb out peak in the windows, count steps (seeing how big the building was), call the seller's number, envision what we could do to make that space work, then get back in the car and look for more properties.

I love seeing my husband's mind at work and I love seeing him wait patiently on the Lord as He provides for us and meets our needs.

We started the Downtown Church 5 years ago with a group of 3o men and women. We surrendered our lives to the Lord, served, loved and watched as He brought more and more people to our service each week. The Lord has never been more real in my own life than He has when I watch people walk through the church doors and feel loved, welcomed and accepted. It's been incredible to see the hundreds of people come into a personal relationship with Christ, grow in their walks with the Lord and become labors for the Kingdom. The Lord took 30 men and women and in five years there are over 600 people that come through the doors of the Downtown Church every weekend. God is transforming a city.

Our new building is perfect. It is a few blocks from the capitol building, surrounded by some of the cutest shops in Des Moines. We have currently been only renting part of the building so we will add another 9000 square feet to the space that we can use, making it a total of 21,000 square feet. It's exciting to think of what we can do with all that space.

Part of the celebration this weekend included a video that was put together to remind people of where we have been with the Lord as a church. It was fun to relive all the memories and think about the 5 different buildings that we have been in up until now. If you have a few minutes you should take a look at this. It's about 20 minutes long but well worth your time. It's an incredible story of the Lord's sovereignty and favor on us at a church. Enjoy watching.

The Downtown Church: Our Journey

I'm not sure what we will do after dinner on our date nights now. I'm sure it will include walking through our new space, envisioning what it should be, how to best use the space, pacing out where rooms will go. I love being married to such an amazing man with a mission and I am honored to be a part of what the Lord is doing in Des Moines. I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for us over the next 5 years.