The Story of Vanguard
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By Kelly Williams, Senior Pastor
Long before Vanguard Church came into existence, it was a dream birthed in the mind of God. He had in mind a place where people could share their spiritual journeys and experience the love of Jesus Christ. The dream of a "vanguard" type of church collided with my life in different ways over the years. However, it wasn't until 1996 that God began to inspire my wife and I with the who, when, where and how that would become Vanguard Church. The picture was not altogether clear at the time, but God gave us enough of a vision to know that we wanted to start a church that would live out the mission of loving people into a REAL relationship with Jesus Christ.
The actual journey of Vanguard Church of Colorado Springs began in October 1996. Twice a week, my wife and I hosted X-Groups in which about a dozen people would come together and share their spiritual journeys. It was a scary and exciting time as we started down the path of planting a church. We dreamed, we hoped, we came up with some crazy ideas and took risks, all with the goal of reaching people for Jesus Christ and establishing a new community of faith. For about five months, we laid the groundwork for our future church.
In March 1997, our sister church, Chapel Hills Baptist Church, allowed us the wonderful opportunity of using their fellowship hall so that we could start having services. On March 2nd, through radio advertising and with about a dozen committed people, we launched our first service with 75 people present. This was the beginning of a dream realized and a mission lived out. Every Sunday night, we hosted what we called an "R-Rated Service" which reached an audience that was very young, mostly single, and overwhelmingly lost. Once again, it was a very scary yet exciting time as we began to see people commit their lives to Christ.
We stayed in the facility at Chapel Hills for about six months until we grew out of that location. We wanted to start a Sunday morning service and needed to find another place for that to be possible. The opportunity came on September 7, 1997, when the doors opened for us to move into Challenger Middle School. We immediately transferred our Sunday night services to the new location, then the next month we started our Sunday morning services and children's ministry. For six months we ministered at Challenger, and we watched our community grow to about 150 people. The dream was expanding and new lives were being challenged to carry out the mission of Vanguard.
In 1998, God gave us the incredible opportunity to move our new community of faith into a semi-permanent facility at Flintridge and Academy. On March 1, 1998, we held our first services in the new facilities. It was so exciting to have the ability to host Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night worship services, as well as have office facilities for the staff and beautiful rooms for the children's ministry. However, despite the amazing new opportunities, our move to Flintridge was a huge financial step of faith for our young church. There were times when I wasn't sure the dream would survive simply because of financial challenges. However, God raised up many dedicated givers in our community of faith. Over and over again He confirmed that the dream of Vanguard is His, not ours. We are simply blessed to be a part of this amazing and miraculous journey.
While at Flintridge and Academy, our church legally constituted, raised up elders, hired our first staff members, developed the Team Player process, and launched our youth and women's ministries. Our church body began to grow and over time, Flintridge began to run out of space for us. I remember going home one night and wondering, "What will we do next?" I turned on the 10:00 p.m. news and watched a report about old movie theaters in our city that were closing. One of those facilities just happened to be a mile down the road from us. Could this be our new home? We dreamed that it would be.
Once again, God was faithful to do the impossible. He carried on the dream of Vanguard Church by opening the doors for us at the former Academy Station Six Theater complex. On October 1st, 2000, about a 100 people gave up their Sunday afternoon to help Vanguard move to this, our present location. A week later, on October 8th, 2000, we held our first worship service in the new facilities.
Just as our move to the Flintridge location was a huge financial step of faith, our move to this former theater was a challenge. However, God has enabled our body to weather more financial storms because of the faithfulness of so many committed people. Since we moved into our Austin Bluffs location, our church has grown from 675 people to just over 1,100 people. In the past three years, we have launched our singles (ConXetion), missions (Beyond Ourselves), college (The Digs), and prayer ministries. God has been faithful to the dream He placed inside of us.
On May 19, 2006 Vanguard experienced a five and half year dream come to fruition. The finance company called and told us, “You own the building and the land.” We are now proud owners of a 27,000 square foot facility and about 3 acres of land. We bought it for 2.8 million and borrowed $600k to renovate three of the facilities and the main bathrooms of the building. There were so many times over those five and half years that we thought it was never going to happen. As a matter a fact, there was one day when the landlord called and said, “Just forget it, you can remain a tenant.” But God had other plans!
After the purchase we immediately started the renovations of three theaters and the main bathrooms. We are excited about the renovations of the three theaters for the children’s ministry. After almost 10 years of a make-shift, temporary wall facility we were finally able to move our children into a permanent location. We are elated by this advancement. Finally, a place the children’s ministry can call home.
After seven and a half years of moving from being a renter to an owner, we added on to our present facility a 20,000 square foot auditorium that seats 1,500 people. We held our first service in Theater Seven on January 27th, 2008. Our first service in the new auditorium drew 1,501 people. God is truly enabling us to love more people into a REAL relationship with Jesus Christ. As soon as we moved out of Theater Six we began the renovation of it so that it could become a pre-function area and smaller auditorium meeting place. We completed it May 2008.
As we look to the future, the future is now. We are in the midst of a REAL Project. We want to renovate the Dub (Student Ministry Center) and the rest of our existing building as soon as possible. We want to purchase the rest of the shopping center to house our church planting school. We have a guaranteed price of $6.6 million to buy the rest of the shopping center in June 2012. This includes roughly 75,000 square feet of space and roughly 7.5 acres. We have the freedom to exercise this right to buy at any time between now and June 2012. As we look beyond the immediate future, our 2037 vision (first 40 years of Vanguard) entails loving 50,000 people into a REAL relationship with Jesus Christ and planting 5,000 churches over the first 40 years of existence. We want to launch our church planting school by fall 2011. We have launched the beginnings of this dream when we began the internship program here at Vanguard. We are also in the midst of dreaming about multi-sites possibly being the most effective way to plant 5,000 churches by 2037. Time will tell on this.
Easter 2010, we launched a Saturday night service on our main campus, using video messaging and live worship. We hope this becomes the arena God uses to launch us into multi-sites.
Easter 2010, we were praying God would allow us to love more people into a REAL relationship with Jesus Christ. We had 2022 people here for our weekend service. This is the first time in the history of our church we have had 2000 plus people here for one weekend.
Looking back 2010 had its Easter highlight, but it also proved to be the year in which our church experienced excessive loss and brokenness. As the economy was given way to a recession, our church was losing ground on its ability to cover its expenses. In the mean time, almost every month we experience a huge loss of someone dying that was key to the core and leadership of our church.
We were all devastated by the great loss and carried great sorrows as a body. As the leadership came into the fall of 2010, it was painfully obvious to them that the church was grieving but it also could no longer sustain its expenses and stay afloat to live out its mission.
In October 2010, our church leadership cut over $500k out of its budget, laid off staff, moved out of the Student and Office spaces in the shopping center, and consolidated all the ministries into the main Vanguard facility. We also gave up the dream of being able to buy the shopping center to house our future church-planting center and to one day expand our church ministries. These were huge negative blows to Vanguard. Much of the leadership wondered at this time, is it over? Have we reached the end of Vanguard church as we know it?
If 2010 was the crucifixion, 2011 was the grave we had to choose to get up out of time and time again. It seemed like the year wanted to bury us alive, but we refused to give up on God’s faithful hand and we held on tight as we too wondered if the rest of the story was to come to a conclusion in 2011.
Our leadership at one point offered Vanguard like Abraham offered Isaac. We believed Vanguard was of God but like Abraham with Isaac, we also knew that God was asking us to offer Vanguard to Him. Fear was our greatest companion in 2011. In the midst of this sacrifice of Vanguard, our leadership had re-order the priorities of our church and nailed down our 7 Core Expressions as a church. We had determined that if God gave us breath we would be about the following 7 things moving forward:
1. Real relationship with God.
2. Real relationship with others.
3. Worship
4. Teaching
5. Next Gen Ministry
6. Serving the Local Community
7. Multiplying
Our primary goal in 2011 as a church was to have 50 healthy active Life Groups.
In February of 2011 we officially launched Life Groups as our primary means of discipleship, so that we could grow in our real relationship with God and others. We organized the body into small groups of 6-12 people that would meet and discuss the weekly sermon. These groups would be responsible for the care, communication, and connected of one another. It was time for the body to be the body to each other.
On the Sunday that we launched our Life Groups our church declined by 23%. It was a drastic blow to our church and it put a further strain on Vanguard’s ability to make its mortgage payment, pay the staff, and keep the ministries going effectively in order to live out its mission. We became a church of about 800 people in 2011.
If 2010 was a year of extreme deaths for the people of Vanguard, then 2011 was a year of excessive change for Vanguard the organization. However, while we were struggling greatly financially and relationally, God was doing something in our midst. He was bringing back to life the calling that He had placed on Vanguard. The church started to stabilize in the last half of the year.
In May 2011, Fike and Dana announced to the church body during the CD release that Integrity Records had signed them to a worship/music contract. This marked a lifetime dream come true for them and for Vanguard. In 2002 when Vanguard was looking for its next worship pastor, the leadership dreamed of having a worship leader who could write songs out of Vanguard’s experiences and publish them for the whole world to sing. God brought this dream to reality in 2011.
In June 2011, our Children Ministry team hosted its annual Vacation Bible Blast. Every other year, for the past five years, we have used the “Chronicles of Narnia” as our theme. The kids and families have loved this week at Vanguard for years now. It is one of the most exciting and energy filled weeks of the year for our church. Many children and families have begun their faith journey experience through this week of outreach into our city.
In June 2011, our Student Ministry hosted it first local mission trip week called, “Mission LOL.” The students served single moms throughout the city and demonstrated the love of Jesus through hands and feet ministry.
In July 2011, a team of Vanguardians led by Rick and Laura Clapp through the Beyond Survival Ministry went to Swaziland, Africa to build a school in honor of David Hames and fulfill the five year commitment Vanguard made to the people of Swaziland in partnership with Children’s Hope Chest.
In August 2011, Vanguard partnered with the Acacia Project founded by Josh Siordia and Austin Glenn to begin serving the local community at Acacia Park. This along with 2nd Saturday, launched by our student ministry, have proven to be the primary ways so far that our church has sought to reach out and be the hands and feet of Christ to our local community.
In September of 2011, God was gracious to Vanguard and allowed Alan and Julie Briggs to launch the Frontline Church Planting Center, a ministry of Vanguard Church, in partnership with the Southern Baptist Convention, and other likeminded churches. It seemed as if God was giving new life where death, loss, and brokenness had been predominate for so long.
With the church-planting center, came the first two church-planting residents. They would begin the process of fulfilling the mission of church planting, that God gave to Vanguard at its inception. Prior to the birth of the church-planting center, Vanguard had partnered with 13 church planters to plant churches in the U.S. and abroad. However, with the birth of the church-planting center, Vanguard along with other churches would be able to more effective in living out the calling of church planting. It is still Vanguard’s desire to help plant 5000 churches by 2037. It is still Vanguard’s desire to love 50k people into a real relationship with Jesus Christ by 2037. It is still Vanguard’s desire to be used by Jesus for eternity.
As Vanguard neared the end of 2011, it was starting to stabilize financially and grow again numerically. The church was able to refinance it mortgages and get the church in a better position moving forward. However, the church had to reach a liquidity covenant agreement with its finance company to maintain the decreased interest rate on the loan. In the 11th hour I (Kelly) asked the Team Players to lean into this covenant and help Vanguard finish the year with at least $100k in the bank to meet the liquidity covenant agreement.
On January 4, 2012 when the elders and pastoral leadership team met to plan the 2012 budget, the church was $4k short from meeting its goal. This was another set back for the leadership. Then one of the leaders said, “Hey, there is a chance that someone postmarked a check and it just hasn’t arrived yet.” Another leader responded, “If that happens that will be a miracle.” Four hours later the postman walked into the Vanguard office with a certified letter in hand and a check for $15k inside. Vanguard exceeded it liquidity covenant requirement, was able to keep the lower interest rate, and is able to keep moving forward toward greater financial health. Thank you Lord!
On January 8, 2012 Vanguard hosted its Vision Casting night and shared with the body the great news about the finances. We also looked back on 2011, one of the two hardest years of Vanguard’s existence, and thanked God that we met our main goal for 2011. We ended the year with 52 healthy active Life Groups with 507 people actively involved. Mission FULFILLED for 2011! Through it all, God had given Vanguard a goal and in spite of all the obstacles in 2011, the church re-centered itself on real relationship with God and others and God honored the labor of our hands. (Nehemiah 13:31a)
We spent 2011 in the weekend services studying through the book of Nehemiah as we sought to create a connected community in Christ for the health, hope, happiness, and holiness of it. Nehemiah 4:20 says, “Our God will fight for us.” That is what God did for Vanguard in 2011. If it had not been for the miraculous hand of God, humanly speaking, Vanguard may very well have ceased to exist in 2011. However, by the grace of God, we march on with the same mission, just with a clearer understanding of our role, God’s role, and how to live out the mission.
Vanguard, today, is on the frontlines taking hits and running risks to love the lost in the lost into a real relationship with Jesus Christ. We are a church that wants to be known like Jesus- “A Friend of Sinners.”
We want to be used by God in 2012 to multiply disciples, leaders, and churches for Jesus.
Let us encourage you to join us in loving MORE people into a REAL relationship with Jesus Christ through Vanguard in 2012.
Vanguard’s story continues...what part will you play?
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