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Thank God for Open and Closed Doors

City Calvary Chapel began meeting together as a church body in February 1998. Since that time, we have had the blessing of living out of a suitcase (trailer, actually). Our loving people have faithfully entered the doors of Hamilton Middle School, in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, to set up church every Sunday morning. Wonderful servants would arrive early to convert the middle school into a church building, turning the auditorium into a sanctuary, nine classrooms into Sunday School rooms, and the foyer into a fellowship hall. The Holy Spirit has faithfully showed up as well, making the building a truly spiritual place and filling our hearts with God's presence and love. People arrived, Bibles were opened, and - voilà - church, which by the way, needed to be packed back into the trailer every Sunday afternoon. The school doors were chained closed and we drove away.

Now I have always taught that the church is made up of human beings and not bricks & mortar, lumber & land. However, as most people will tell you, they would rather have a permanent place to live than opening and closing a suitcase each week. We at City Calvary Chapel are no different. The two great obstacles we faced in owning our own building were money and available property, both of which were in short supply. Over the years, we looked at buildings to purchase, but the Lord continued to close doors. Some buildings were too expensive, some were too small, some were actually not available (even after we made an agreement with the sellers), and some just didn't seem right. Despite all of the closed doors, we were never discouraged, though it did begin to feel as if God wanted us as renters, living out of a suitcase, for our whole existence.

But then, all of a sudden, another door closed. The school that we have been meeting in for all of these years was suddenly on the list for renovation, and we were told that we must leave by May 2008. Now the Lord needed to start opening doors - and that He did. We walked into a church building, owned by a Russian fellowship, in south Shoreline. The moment we walked through those doors we knew we were home. The building was perfect for us; "too good to be true," as all of us felt. The only problem was two doors. The first door was our need to raise over $500,000 in six weeks. The second door was convincing the seller to sell the building to us and not to this other church group that had just made a great offer and didn't need to raise any money because of their national backing. From our vantage point, these doors seemed too big to open. Thankfully, God sees things from His vantage point. Our Russian brothers and sisters felt the Lord's leading to choose us and accepted our offer. Open door #1. City Calvary needed to raise $500,000 in six weeks and instead raised $600,000. Open door #2. We are so thankful to our kind and gracious God for closed and open doors. He is so good!!!

Now our Lord has opened the door for City Calvary Chapel to have our own building full-time, in a terrific location, big enough for our needs, and in fantastic condition. We truly anticipate a wonderful new chapter in the life of our church. We are so excited to use this home that He has given us. Because we now have much more opportunity and flexibility in a full-time location, we truly believe that it will better help us build a community of people who love Jesus and each other, love to study God's word, and love to reach out to our neighbors and city as we now have a place to invite them to. We hope that you will feel free to come through our open doors and worship, learn of, and experience our great and mighty God with us.

In His Service,

John Aydelott
Senior Pastor, City Calvary Chapel
July 30th, 2007

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