Calvary Church

Church:
Calvary Church
Location:
Valparaiso, IN
Attendance:
1,600
Campaign Type:
Building Expansion
Campaign Theme:
Even More
Campaign Financial Commitments:
$3.8M

Client Challenge

Calvary Church has a laser focus on one thing: changing lives by the power of the Gospel. It permeates everything they do. Their focus, along with God’s blessing, has resulted in very rapid growth – an attendance of 588 in 2006 is over 1,500 today. This growth has created challenges, specifically, how to increase facility capacities to keep pace with rapid numerical growth. Church leaders determined that a major building expansion was inevitable. However, a Pre-Campaign Assessment established a preliminary estimate of capital campaign fundraising capacity of $2.3M – substantial to be sure, but well below what was needed to fully accomplish their vision.

CGS Response

Rather than merely scale the project down, Calvary leaders instead decided to “power up” their fund raising to meet their vision. They did this by initiating conversations with high-capacity givers, asking them to consider making significant investments in the vision of changing more lives. With the coaching of their CGS mentor, leaders began a series of confidential personal meetings in which they shared the vision and invited high-capacity families to make transformative investments in the future of Calvary Church.

Campaign Outcome

What happened next changed the course of the project, church leaders discovered that most high-capacity givers were not only eager to become “difference makers”, but pleased to be invited to do so. In the end, when the capital campaign commitments were tallied, more than $3.8M had been committed. Because leaders stepped out of their comfort zones, Calvary Church is now able to reach “Even More!”