Chan's Personal Blog

Today was the day that our church, North Douglas Church, corporately celebrated the burning of the mortgage. It was neat to see a lot of former members of the church and former pastors attend this event. The association that our church is a part of also sent a few dignitaries our way.

My morning started bright and early at 8:45am as we had three different bands/groups to setup for the morning service. Time was tight as each group was allocated 45 minutes to setup, warm up, and practice. I was surprised that everyone finished their practices on time.

The morning service easily had 200+ people. You could sense a lot of anticipation and excitement in the air. Former Pastor Gary gave the morning sermon which was quite good. He emphasized that just because the church has finished paying off its financial debt, it is no time to rest as there is much work to do. There are still many lives we can help and improve. Being freed from debt enables the church to dream bigger now.

At around noon, the morning service ended, and the church hosted a free lunch for everyone. There were lots of sandwiches and baked goodies. I had the privilege of washing dishes after the lunch. That may sound sarcastic, but I really had a great time doing the dishes. Our church features an awesome commercial-grade kitchen, and the equipment is absolutely amazing. So, I load about 24 dirty dishes into a dish tray, and I get to wash them down with a high pressure water hose. The hose was amazing, it absolutely obliterates any food left on the dishes. Next, I move the trays along a track to the industrial strength dish washing machine. You open it up, slide the tray of 24 dishes into it, shut it, and wait 40 seconds. After 40 seconds, the dishes come out clean, hot, and sterile. It's absolutely amazing. I have to get one of these! On a side note, I found out the hard way that you have to put a tray on top of a tray of cups if you're putting them through the washer. If you don't, the cups get spun around in the power dish washer as the jets are really powerful. Oops

I'll move on to some of the background of the church. A little more than 10 years ago, the church was on Douglas and Canterbury Road. Highway 17 was being built, and the government expropriated all the land in the area to make way for the highway, which included the church's property. So, the church members had to find new land and build a new church. They settled on Jolly Place Road which is just off Mckenzie and Glanford. The members dreamed big and built a fairly large facility while taking on a lot of debt. It's a miracle that the church members have paid off all the debt within 10 years since the facility cost about $5 million to build.

I have to admit, five years ago, it seemed like paying off this mortgage was impossible. Interest payments were $66,000 a year which is a LOT of money. During that time, some stuff was happening in the church which caused some people to leave. In the last few years, the number have rebounded. In either case, at times it seemed bleak.

I offer my hats off to the older people in our church for getting this mortgage paid off. Many many many years ago, a bunch of them got together and bought three lots of land which are adjacent to our current church's location. They also got together to build houses on the land, and donated them to the church as well. During financial hard times, it was very tempting for the church to sell those houses in order to get out of debt, but they held off on that. Then this year, at the height of the housing market boom, the church decided to sell off those pieces of land in order to pay off a good chunk of the mortgage. The timing was absolutely perfect. Had they sold the houses a few years back, we would still have a large debt load. By selling these houses this year for top dollar, we fetched quite a pretty penny for the houses. Anyways, if it wasn't for the seniors getting together years and years ago, we would be not be seeing the mortgage burned.

Anyways, a second service was held at 3:00pm. A bunch of dignitaries gave short speeches about the history of the church, and gave their congratulations. The mortgage burning was quite the spectacle and a very joyous occasion.

North Douglas Church is on the move! At this point, I'm filled with cautious optimism for the future.