Questing After God’s Heart

I want to take a moment to talk about our experience with our recent capital campaign and the help we received from Church Coach Ministries, and specifically the role of Jeremy Malick. Last June our church leaders became convinced that we were supposed to mount an effort to retire the church mortgage debt. The amount owed was roughly $434,000, which was substantially more than our annual church budget. Going in we realized that debt reduction campaigns are the most difficult. Jeremy and CCM helped us form a leadership committee, complete with job descriptions. We also planned a special fundraiser event for friends of the church and within the community. But, the most important contribution of CCM was in helping us organize a concerted effort in prayer. The pace at which these funds came in surprised us all and I am happy to report that, after 25 years of mortgage debt, our church is now debt free!

The assistance of CCM and Jeremy Malick was invaluable in this effort.

This past spring, I had the privilege of working with Jeremy Malick and Church Coach Ministries to conduct a Vision (Capital) Campaign at our church. As a pastor, I have led five capital campaigns over the years and know just how taxing the process can be. I have also learned that the organization you choose to work with is vitally important as they must be a good fit with the ethos of your congregation. With this knowledge, I invested significant time researching potential firms to work with for our capital campaign. Ultimately, I settled on CCM and Jeremy, and it was the best choice I could have made!

Jeremy enthusiastically invested in our campaign, Building Bridges, and provided us with invaluable insights and advice. The training materials were extremely clear and the training of our leadership team was very well done. Once the campaign went public and was up and running, I don’t think there was a week that went by that Jeremy didn’t personally touch base with me by phone or email. He was always available for a quick call so I could run a new idea by him at the last minute.

Our church had never conducted a capital campaign, so I was somewhat leery of what kind of success we might have. But because of the nature of our campaign, which launched with forty days of prayer and fasting, followed later by a 24-hour prayer vigil, our congregation was immediately receptive to our efforts. The prayer vigil was actually one of the highlights of our campaign as God moved among us in some very powerful and exciting ways!

Ultimately, God blessed us with a very successful campaign! We raised $806,000 for Building Bridges, with $250,000 of that given within the first month as a result of the “first fruits” offering Jeremy suggested we make available to people.

Throughout the campaign I didn’t receive a single complaint, but rather many comments about how “tasteful” and spiritually focused the campaign was! I thank Jeremy and, of course, the Lord for that!

I highly recommend Jeremy and the services of CCM if you are considering a capital campaign in your future—you won’t be disappointed if you do the things he trains you to do. I’d also be happy to talk personally with anyone who has questions about working with Jeremy and CCM.

FBC Silverton has had the privilege and blessing of partnering with Jeremy Malick and Church Coach Ministries for our Vision Campaign. I met Jeremy at a meeting that was meant to provide information for church capital campaigns. I was struck by the fact that our entire time was spent talking about prayer and discipleship rather than raising funds for a church building project. Our church invited Jeremy out to share his passion and vision for this ministry, and we were led to partner with him and his team.

What began as a meeting to consider a capital campaign for our church turned into a journey along the paths of discipleship, prayer and fasting, and stewardship, and has now resulted in considerable growth, both spiritually and numerically, at our little rural church. The Lord has led us beyond any ideas or thoughts we had for this campaign. Our church has not broken ground on the new project yet, but we have already seen incredible personal growth in our church members as they have faithfully trusted the Lord, and our average attendance is up more than 20% since the beginning of the year.

Jeremy’s excitement and personal humility helped to set the stage for our people to trust what the Lord had in store for us. Our church has a 130-year history here in the Texas Panhandle, and now we are in the midst of seeing the Lord prepare us to continue serving this community for many more years to come. Jeremy and his team played a part in that, and we are grateful for his calling and leadership in this specialized area of ministry to churches.