IAC is growing! And like all living things, our structures need to grow to support that increased life. Over the next few weeks, we’re publishing updates from our All-Church Gathering about how our structures are growing in several key areas: Generosity, Facility, Staffing, the Discipleship Pathway, and Conflict Response. We hope these give you insight into how our structures are strengthening: and how you can help!
From Pastor Ken:
The purpose of a church facility isn’t to show how big or important a church is, or to feed the leadership’s ego! The purpose of a facility—quite simply—is to facilitate the ministry God has given us to do. It is a means to an end of gospel healing being released into the world.
And the facility we currently rent from SDA is, well, not that great at facilitating our ministries.
On Sunday mornings, we've simply outgrown two services. Our courtyard that opens into the alley is a space and safety issue, the hallway is too small for meaningful connection, and we're threatening to overwhelm our Kid Ministry capacity in the 9:30am service.
Throughout the week, we have limited opportunities to gather in larger groups. We are also limited in the size of gatherings we can host. For example, this year we will have to cap our VBS attendance at 175 kids: we anticipate moving to a waitlist in the next few weeks.
At the same time, we remain largely invisible to the surrounding neighborhood, and our facility does not allow us to host the kind of missional ministry that would welcome those we hope to serve—particularly those who are not yet ready to join us in worship.
In short, the right facility could help us deepen our presence with one another and in our city. And we long for that deepening!
For all these reasons, in 2024 IAC’s Church Council initiated the journey of searching for a facility we could own here in the city. In early 2025, we began the process of financial preparation through our first-ever Capital Campaign, where IAC banded together to start “Creating Space at the Table.”
And even though our facility has not yet shifted, we are far more ready to move—when the right facility does come on the market—than we’ve ever been!
The irony of this journey is that IAC actually has a lot of experience building bricks and mortar. The facilities we’ve invested in are simply in Rwanda!
In our sustainable development partnership with our sending church in Rwanda, we’ve contributed to a health clinic that now serves a large portion of northern Rwanda and a Conference Center that is the anchor for a developing Vocational Training Center (which we call the Thriving Center).
On the last IAC pilgrimage to Rwanda, we got to view this newly completed facility and were in awe of the missional possibilities it creates for their church. It may be one of the three nicest conference facilities in the whole country! We’re excited to continue partnering to build out the facilities for the rest of the Thriving Center, which is already underway. There’s much more to come.
I was so deeply thankful, as I stood in that hall, that we had put first things first. This was a game-changer for our Rwandan sister church, and it was right and good to start our building efforts there.
But I also realized how much having a new facility here in Colorado Springs would mean for our ministries. And our Rwandan brothers and sisters are praying right alongside us for us to have a new facility as well.
It will take a move of God for this to happen, and I don’t say that flippantly.
The size of facility we need is substantial: an auditorium that seats 600, over 250 parking spots, space for kids and students, all in an area of town that could use the enduring presence of a church committed to releasing the gospel in word and deed. Although we’ve looked at more than 80 (!) different facilities, none of them have worked, for one reason or another. But we’re trusting that God will provide when the place and time is right.
Our best guess is that we will be transforming an existing facility instead of building one from scratch, because building from the ground up costs over twice as much as a renovation. We trust that no matter what we find (or where we find it!) we can make the worship space beautiful and inviting.
We are also looking to partner with organizations that may be on a similar journey, creating shared opportunities together. If you have any ideas about facilities or potential partners, never hesitate to email connect@springsiac.org.
One of the biggest obstacles, of course, is financial. Because we have rented for almost 24 years, we do not have any current facility equity to contribute to a purchase. Therefore, the entire project must be funded by a combination of savings and a new mortgage. As we posted in last week’s blog on Strengthening Generosity, our General Fund will support the eventual mortgage, and giving to that General Fund is currently our greatest need.
However, our Facility Fund contributes to our eventual down payment: and we’ve made great progress!
As you can see, we’ve made great progress in financial readiness. The jump between 2024 and 2026 is due to IAC’ers being generous during 2025’s Capital Campaign and beginning to fulfill their pledges (which are due in March 2028).
It is important to note that in any “pledge” situation, life circumstances sometimes change and people aren’t able to fulfill their pledges. That’s okay: we trust God to provide for all of us!
Currently, we’ve lost about $150,000 worth of pledges from changing circumstances: if 25 people at $250/month chipped in, we’d fill that gap and be ready to take our next leap when a facility emerges.
Whenever you’d like to give directly to the Facility Fund, you can do so at springsiac.org/give: just click the drop-down box to find the Facility Fund.
We would encourage all those who haven’t made pledges yet—or who are new to IAC since our 2025 Capital Campaign—to make pledges to the Facility Fund (to be fulfilled by March 2028). If you’d like to make a pledge or simply need more information, simply email us at connect@springsiac.org and we’ll tell you what you need to know!
As you can see in the chart below, we still have a distance to go in our Facility funding: this is going to take all of us! But we’re encouraged about the direction we’re heading.
Seeing numbers like this often makes people ask, “Are there other options?”
Unfortunately, renting at current market rates at an appropriate facility—for example, at a D11 school—is more money, for less facility access, with more setup responsibilities, and less stability.
Another option is to create satellite campuses at various locations around the city. If we ever pursued this option, IAC would certainly commit to live preaching (no video feeds are in our future!). But we don’t currently believe this fits our staffing, culture, and ministry philosophy.
We could also, of course, add more services. But we don’t currently have the staffing to accomplish this, and it would only be a temporary move since it doesn’t solve our more fundamental needs for greater presence on Sunday mornings and throughout the week. Additionally, any service times left on the calendar (probably evenings) would be unlikely to create space on Sunday morning.
Often, church planting gets raised as a natural solution: just plant more churches! But we and many other churches have found that healthy church planting actually increases growth rates instead of slowing them. People see what God is doing and are drawn in by the sacrificial investment in formation, mission, and leadership development. For example, during our last church plant, we sent 65 IAC’ers, and I only could discern the drop in attendance for about 6 weeks. People quickly arrived to fill their seats!
In the meantime, we keep doing what God has asked us to do. And we do our best to steward well the great gift God has given us in being able to rent Central SDA’s facility.
There are three primary next steps that could help us make the best use of our space at IAC:
(1) Spread out from the 9:30am service to the 8am & 11am. Right now, a graph of our attendance at three services would look like a sharp pointy mountain: lots in the middle service and less on the sides! We need our services to look more like Pikes Peak: 9:30am will always be highest, but larger services at 8am and 11am would greatly help create space!
Spreading out is especially needed for newcomers (who often first visit the 9:30am service and find it “full”) and our Kids Ministry, which is extremely full at 9:30am. Some parents are even finding that the 8am and 11am services are a better fit for their kids since they can receive more personal attention!
(2) Park far up San Miguel. We know parking is hard. We hear stories of newcomers circling our lot and giving up—for multiple weeks!—before gaining courage to park far up the street and walk down to the sanctuary.
If you or a member of your family truly need the parking lot, please use it. But if you’re able to walk (and let’s be honest, lots of us can use the extra steps!), please park up San Miguel as far as you’re able. This helps us all find a place so we can feel welcomed and wanted at IAC!
Also, please be aware that we are discontinuing parking in the Francis Place circle. There is no way to effectively park there without blocking people’s driveways, so we are endeavoring to be good neighbors and leaving that area for local residents.
(3) Join a Team. We have several Ministry Teams that are particularly important in our current Facility: and we’d love your help on them!
The Parking Team helps people find a spot, cross the road at San Miguel, and prevent accidents. (And they look great doing it in those orange vests too!).
The Facility Support Team monitors the hallway and grounds, ensuring we’re aware of what’s happening around us.
And the Kid Team always needs more loving, caring faces shepherding our kids into Kid Church, through their time of worship, and back into the sanctuary.
To find out more about these (and any other) IAC teams, simply email connect@springsiac.org or fill out the Together Survey when it arrives in IAC Notes during the months of August, January, or May!
So we wait for what comes next, but not passively.
We pray, and give, and pray, and serve, and pray, and walk up San Miguel, and pray some more, expectant that God will supply all that we need “according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).
I’m truly excited to see what he’ll do, and all he’ll teach us along the way.
On the journey together,
Pastor Ken