Yesterday's Solution, Today's Problem

While reading an article in a business journal last night, a statement jumped off the page and grabbed my attention: “Yesterday’s solutions are today’s problems.” How very true that statement is! The building located on Oakhurst Drive where the church known as Bible Center meets was once a great solution to the problem of the church’s continued growth.

Those who were here in the mid-seventies during the relocation from the downtown site to our current location have shared with me what a blessing it was for the congregation to move into this wonderful facility. This building was a solution to the space problem Bible Center Church faced back then. This site with all of its various expansions, additions, and enhancements has served as a wonderful tool of ministry to the glory of God for almost three decades.

The great solution has become a huge problem. God has continued to bless Bible Center with growth as a result of the church staying focused on the life-changing Good News of Jesus Christ. The pattern this church has faced over the years is a difficult one, but a good one: outgrowing various sites. Over the sixty plus years of ministry, this group of believers has moved from meeting in homes, to gathering in the shoe department of a downtown department store, to renting a store front, to buying a large home on the old Broad Street, to building a place to meet on the Kanawha boulevard, and finally to relocating to its current site on Corridor G. As the church has grown spiritually and numerically over the years, at each stage of that amazing growth the leadership has recognized that the past solution has become a current problem. We are now in that same situation again.

This wonderful site has become a hindrance and a hurdle to sharing Christ with the lost and teaching the relevant message of God’s Word for Christian living today. Praise the Lord He has opened a door for us in the new property at Southridge. He has provided us a 96 acre solution for the next phase of this church family’s ministry in the Kanawha Valley. We believe this is His solution for many, many decades to come.

Pray today that God would move us there more quickly than we would anticipate. Pray that God would bless some of our families financially in surprising ways and that He would burden them to give graciously and generously so that we might move into His new solution for us as we seek to preach Christ free from site restrictions! Pray that God would once again provide for us as we seek to remain faithful to Him and His Word.