Brooklyn Park Church Celebrates $6M Mortgage Milestone
A Brooklyn Park church is celebrating a milestone much sooner than expected thanks to generosity from its congregation.
A church is more than just its walls. But the price of keeping those walls up can be costly. At Grace Fellowship, the church was chipping away at its $6 million mortgage.
“Every church has a dream of helping their community, but they feel drained by the burden of their debts and the day-to-day expenses of running the church,” said Pastor Joe Boyd.
Grace Fellowship has expanded a number of times since its founding.
Boyd became lead pastor at the Brooklyn Park church in 2018. When he arrived, the church was still making large payments to the bank each month.
“We were a quarter of a million dollars behind on the budget and had $43,000 of mortgage payments due every month,” Boyd said.
He said one day at church in 2022, he mentioned that debt to Grace’s congregation. A church visitor took note, and asked if she could help pay off some of the mortgage directly. Boyd said he and the church’s elders told her she could.
“To my surprise, she donated $25,000. And we applied that to the principle, and I shared that with our church heading into Christmas,” he said.
That act of generosity got the congregation thinking. It started a chain reaction. Within a year, Grace Fellowship’s $1 million campaign was fulfilled. Pastor Boyd said it’s still hard to find the words for how meaningful those contributions were.
“We were able to pay off the mortgage and start to invest in our community in a significant way,” he said.
Hundreds of members of the congregation contributed in donations big and small.
Expanding Outreach
The next step for the church is accomplishing its goals that reach outside its walls. Boyd said with this debt relief, the church can focus on its five main mission goals: The first is projects that meet community needs, like addressing food insecurity. The second is local outreach, which includes partnerships with schools.
The church also hopes to start more chapters nationally, including its Thai church in Brooklyn Park.
Fourth, it wants to reach out internationally through mission work. Pastor Boyd also said the church is planning to start a school of ministry.
“We may not have a big budget, but we have a big God. And we believe God can do these things,” Boyd said.
Scott Ward, a member of the church, said the high level of congregation participation was encouraging.
“Now, we can free it up for a lot of ministries,” Ward said. “It’s really good that we can really be 100 percent toward that.”
On Sunday, April 28, the church held its debt-free celebration. Boyd, alongside the church’s founders, burned the final, completed payment in front of the congregation.
“We’re not going to be consumed by our debt. But we’re going to be consumed with a passion of what being debt-free means,” Boyd said.
One of Grace Fellowship’s kids played in the confetti after the celebration.
