Why Are We Moving Our Canton Campus?

We announced this last Sunday that we are relocating our Canton campus and we couldn’t be more excited. This has been a move we have been praying about for over a year!!!

Let me give you a little background about our relationship with the movie theater. We moved into the theater 2 years ago and we have had a great relationship with the staff. They have been very good to us and the theater has served us well. We wouldn’t be the church we are today without the theater. The location and the building served us awesome.

As great as they have been to us, there have been several reasons we needed to move. We have been there two years and we have never had a contract. The parent company will not allow churches to sign one so we have been month to month for two years. Every time they have a surprise inspection, we are stressed out that this is the time we are getting thrown out. Along with having no contract, we have had our rent raised three times in two years, have had storage nightmares, and they start movies earlier and earlier meaning we have to get out earlier and earlier. The biggest challenge has been putting on a children’s environment with excellence in the theater. I think our team does a GREAT job, but making our children’s area bright, clean, and useable for our children is tough. With those things in mind, we have prayed and prayed for God to provied a new location.

Every consultant we have brought in and every mentor I have has told us we had to get out of the theater. That was easier said then done. Moving a church our size is not that easy. Finding a place to meet is not easy. We have called on EVERY available building, every available school, every place that had an open room. God opened NO doors. We really felt God wanted us between exit 14 and 20. The only building big enough was Cherokee High School and there has been a good church meeting there for a few years now and they have no plans to move out. We thought about challenging them to a fight but we thought we would win too easy. After searching every where, we determined that God would provide a place at the right time.

About a month ago, a friend of our church called me. He has never been to our church, goes to a traditional church, and probably doesn’t understand everything we do, BUT he is one of our biggest fans. He has been good to us over the last three years and he serves on the board of the Boys and Girls Club. He called me one day to just give me a tour and that led to us meeting the director, Jeff Brooks, and that led to the door opening for us to use their brand new, 20,000 sq ft, 2.5 million dollar building!!!!

There is A LOT of work to do before moving on January 6th, but the move is such a God thing for us that we can’t be anything but excited. We have been praying for 12 months for this and God showed up big time in HIS timing.

Some of the pluses of moving locations:

• We can reach more people!!!! That is enough of a reason to move by itself. We currently meet on Exit 20 which is the last exit in Canton and puts us at the very north end of Cherokee County. This moves positions RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the county. We are still located in Canton, but we are now centrally located to Hickory Flat, Holly Springs, Towne Lake, and Woodstook. All of these towns are BOOMING towns that we haven’t had much impact in due to our location being so far north. We now move from being a City of Canton church to being a Cherokee County church. We have the chance to reach the 150,000 people located in this county much better.
• We get it all day - For us, this is huge. We have been under huge time constrants at the movie theater. At the Club, it is ours on Sunday.
• We have a contract - We like that.
• Our rent goes down - We get a better building for cheaper rent. We can’t that as a huge plus.
• Children’s Area - From a insider point of view, this is the BIGGEST win for us. The Club was built for children. It’s purpose is children. The children’s space is perfect, it is clean, it is roomy, it is designed for kids. We are a church full of young families and since we don’t allow children in our services, I am thrilled at the level this is going to take our children’s ministry.
• It is farther away from Jasper - With our campus set to launch there at the first of the year, the need to stay in north Canton was erased. We have some great people coming from Jasper and we will now serve them with their own campus.
• Easier set-up - Notice I didn’t say less set-up. However the Club is going to allow us to fly our sound system, lights, and video in the ceiling at the gym and leave it up all week!!!!!!!! I would much rather lay out plastic chairs compared to carrying speakers and lights in every week.
• First Impression - The building is state of the art. It looks like it could be a church.
• Built-in partnership - We want to be a church that is creating a revolution in North Georgia and we are going to do that by giving back to the communities we have locations in. We have a natural partnership at the Club that will allow us to impact the lives of those who need impacting.

I couldn’t be more excited about the move and the position God has put us in. On the surface, people outside of our church are shocked we are moving out of the theater, but they don’t understand the vision we have to impact this county. Everything we do is about people and this move allows us to reach more people and do church the way we do it in a more efficient way.

Revolution Church, I have been telling you for months God was preparing us for HUGE things. I could feel in my spirit that big things were about to happen. We have seen huge success in the last 36 months, but we will continue to push and be driven to reach more people. What God is doing here is NOT normal. The lives that have been changed here is not what is happening in a lot of churches. God has used a bunch of CRAZY people to do awesome things and I promise we ain’t seen nothing compared to what He has in store.