Montavilla Neighborhood Association

If You Buy It, I Will Build (New Beginnings Church)...

Apr 10, 2000

New Beginnings is hoping to build its new $20 million church debt-free.

BY RACHEL GRAHAM
Willamette Week, March 29, 2000
rgraham@wweek.com

Four years ago, New Beginnings Christian Center bought 84 acres at 175th Street and Sandy Boulevard in Gresham on a hope and a prayer. The church's plans included a large church complex, acres of parking, and virtually no ideas on how to finance it all.

As Senior Pastor Larry Huch said in a recent sermon, "God told me, 'If you buy the land, I'll build the building.'"

Now, in a deal that puts the church's prosperity gospel to the test, New Beginnings is hoping to build its new $20 million church debt-free. Working with Opus Northwest, one of the country's largest real-estate developers, New Beginnings is trying to meet community needs and church goals while maximizing profits.

According to Huch, New Beginnings purchased the land for $4.2 million with donations from the congregation and a small loan (the church, Huch says, still owes about $500,000 on the land). Rather than take out a conventional mortgage for the new church, New Beginnings is planning to sell 54 acres for about $14 million to Opus Northwest, which will develop the property.

Contracts aren't finalized yet, but Opus plans to construct eight to 10 flexible-use office buildings with capacity for up to 3,500 workers on its acreage. (Opus development director Bruce Wood says a major regional employer is interested in a significant parcel.)

As part of the deal, Opus will give the church a percentage of its development profits. Those funds, along with the $14 million, should cover construction costs for the church's new complex, including a 5,000-seat sanctuary and a 40,000-square-foot kids' center. "This deal," Huch says, "is saving us literally millions and millions of dollars--all because we taught prosperity."

Opus is a good match for the church. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company cuts its profit margin for church developments. In addition, Opus donates 10 percent of its pretax earnings to charitable organizations, a fact Huch clearly relishes as akin to tithing.

Huch is unapologetic about New Beginnings' combination of commercial and spiritual enterprises. "We're in the business of religion, you have to pay the bills, you have to do all these things, but you're not supposed to prosper. That doesn't make any sense," he says. "If prosperity is bad, God would never have given it to us."

Where many successful churches have built facilities apart from others--City Bible, for instance, is high on a hill--New Beginnings wants to mix with secular enterprises. He notes that the church provides programs that appeal to many employers, such as day care and after-school tutoring.

"We don't want to isolate us from them," Huch says. "There's enough doing that; we want to go in the other direction."

New Beginnings' plans are good news to Gresham officials. Although the land originally was zoned industrial, the Gresham Planning Commission granted the church an exemption in 1998. Had New Beginnings simply built a church, the city would have lost a valuable chunk of its dwindling industrial land from the tax rolls.