IT’S TIME is our three-year generosity initiative to fund our vision to strengthen our community engagement, elevate our ministry capacity, and fearlessly lay the foundation for our future growth.

This November we are at the midpoint of IT’S TIME. This is a moment to celebrate what God has done, renew our commitments, and invite those who are new to Eastgate to join us on the journey. Through IT’S TIME, God is calling us to partner with Him by investing ourselves and our resources in greater levels of commitment, in order to saturate Rocky Mount and Wilson and the surrounding areas of Eastern North Carolina with the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Because we’re at the midpoint of our three-year commitment and we want to both encourage those who have already committed and inform and inspire our new attenders to join us on the journey. In order to accomplish our three goals, we intend to complete our faith commitment of $1.6 million. Our primary goal during this initiative is 100% engagement. So one of the really important benefits is that we grow in the spiritual discipline of generosity together.

Most importantly, this initiative prioritizes our goal to reach every man, woman, and child in our cities and region, so they have repeated opportunities to see, hear, and respond to the gospel. We believe God is telling us that it’s time to be strong, do the work, and fearlessly reach our region for Jesus!

The church is the family of God. And healthy families grow. Just as parents sometimes may wish that their children wouldn’t grow so fast, so we may cling to a similar sentiment for our church. Yet, the truth is, no parent would truly wish their children not to grow. That would be unhealthy and selfish. Neither should we wish that our church family wouldn’t grow.

Besides, the Lord Jesus has commanded us to make disciples of all nations. As we are obedient to Christ’s command, we will grow. As a result, we will need to strengthen our community engagement, so that every man, woman, and child has repeated opportunities to see, hear, and respond to the gospel. We will also need to enhance our current ministries and enlarge our ministry capacity by adding more volunteers and pastoral staff. Of course, we also need to provide adequate space for this growth at both our current campuses, and at future campuses in Eastern North Carolina as the Lord leads us. Every family needs a home.

Because our goal is 100% engagement in taking the spiritual journey together, not in raising $1.6 million. We will be preaching from the book of Zechariah and asking our church family to respond as the people of Zechariah’s and Haggai’s day did, by saying, “It’s time to be strong, do the work, and to be fearless.” We believe that how we handle the time, talent and treasure that God gives us is a spiritual matter. So, we will be challenging everyone to prayerfully trust God by growing in their personal investment into His kingdom. Not everyone will be able to give the same, but everyone should be willing to prayerfully consider giving more.

Radical generosity is our goal for everyone. We want to move people up the generosity ladder to experience the freedom and joy of being a generous giver and investor in God’s kingdom. If everyone fully engages in the spiritual journey together, then whatever we raise, we will be thankful. Yet, we are trusting that as our people willingly and sacrificially give above their tithes and offerings, we will be able to accomplish the vision God has given us.

No, not if our church continues to follow the paradigm given in the 1st century church to grow big and small at the same time. Remember what the Scripture says, “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah” (Acts 5:42). As we grow in Sunday attendance, we will need to launch new community groups that meet in homes. We will continue to follow the rhythm of the 1st century church–– meeting in the “temple courts and from house to house.”

As our church grows, you won’t get lost in the crowd. You’ll always have your community group family and you’ll also have the service teams that you serve on with others in the church.

We have always been a church that lives within its means. After all, we met in homes and rented facilities for 19 years in Wilson before having a home of our own. We rented space for ten years in Rocky Mount before purchasing our current home there. We support dozens of local, domestic, and international ministries. We spend thousands of dollars annually in benevolence and missions.

So no, we don’t think this money could be spent better anywhere else. Our church handles all of its finances with integrity and multiple layers of accountability. We live within our means. Besides this, the church is God’s “Plan A” for reaching the world with the Gospel. He doesn’t have a “Plan B.” The church is a better investment than the government, better than any other non-profit, or NGO.

God has given us a vision to reach the people in our two cities and in Eastern North Carolina. Shouldn’t we be willing to give sacrificially so that it is used to its fullest potential? We believe that the church is the very best place to spend our generosity. We want to reach more people, inviting them to come just as they are and be forever changed by the love of Jesus.

It costs money to invest in new resident mailers, special event mailers, door hangers, billboards and other media. If people don’t know we exist, they won’t come. And to reach the younger generations we must especially be strong in our social media engagement.

Research tells us that Millennials and Gen-Zers make at least 3 to 4 visits on Google and YouTube before considering an in-person visit. And now that we’ve been using It’s Time funds in this important arena, we’re seeing this research first-hand. Every week we meet first-time guests who tell us that they found us online and that they’ve watched several sermons and read Google reviews on us before ever walking through our doors on Sunday morning.

Yes. This is actually one of the benefits of this generosity initiative. According to current church growth research, a full-time pastor is needed for every 75-100 attenders. Our It’s Time initiative has already enabled us to hire a Director of Ministries in Rocky Mount and a Children’s Ministry Director in Wilson. This initiative is helping pay the salaries of these positions until our regular church budget grows to match our attendance growth.

Because we have been advised that it is neither financially feasible nor practically advisable to do the worship center phase next. It will be the most costly phase and we want to grow in attendance and giving within our current building footprint before beginning Phase Three. This will put us in a better financial position to begin the worship center phase. But we do plan to set aside a portion of the funds from this initiative to be used for planning and design for this future phase, as well as starting a Phase Three fund, saving towards it. The time will come for Wilson to build a new worship center, but we have to fill this building first!

They are being distributed according to priority, with community engagement being first, expanding staffing second, supporting the additional mortgage payments for the new Rocky Mount home third, and finally setting aside the remaining funds for the future worship center in Wilson.

The chart in “The Journey Ahead” above gives an idea of how we plan to apportion the funds raised during the 3-year initiative.

Most importantly, this initiative will prioritize our goal to reach every man, woman, and child in our cities and region, so they have repeated opportunities to see, hear, and respond to the gospel.

Our It’s Time commitment of $1.6 million was used to secure a loan for the $1.2 million purchase. We are currently using the initiative funds to support the increased mortgage payments until we grow enough to cover it out of our regular giving.

These funds will be collected into one fund. Although we keep our campus’ budgets separate, we will be combining our It’s Time giving into one fund. This will make it easier and more strategic to budget for the three goals that we share as one church, two campuses.

First, we believe we will reach it. With God’s help and mutual sacrifice, we exceeded the goal in our last generosity initiative and we’re already nearly half way there in this one. So we have faith we will reach this goal too. However, we will always live within our means and we will adjust the funding of our three goals accordingly, with the priority being in the order of the three goals as we have described above.

We love this question. It reveals a servant’s heart of unity and willingness. What can you do? Engage fully in the IT’S TIME journey. Let us be like the returning Jewish exiles who were challenged to be strong, do the work, and to fearlessly sacrifice to rebuild the Temple. Accept the challenge to own this vision and calling of God. We must walk this out in unity as a church. Start by praying for people in your life yet to be reached. Pray for what God would want to do in and through you to reach them.

Ask God to speak to your heart and simply respond to his leading when the time comes. Take the time to go through the materials provided to prepare us to hear from God. Be diligent to participate in all aspects of the IT’S TIME generosity initiative. Remember, our goal is 100% of our church family participating in prayer and sacrificial generosity when the time comes, so that together, we accomplish what God desires from us and for us.

Ask them. Just ask at our It’s Time table or send us an email at info@eastgate.church, and we’ll get back to you. It’s important to us that everyone’s questions are given careful consideration. At the end of the day, we want to be united in vision and direction. We may not all agree on every detail (as is true in any family), but we want to always march together in unison towards God’s will for us.