A video released by Mennonite Men highlights a grant program that helps newer congregations acquire their first church building.
The video tells a story about a building expansion at Assembly Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana, and how that work relates to a newer church in North Carolina buying the building it formerly rented.
The Mennonite Men grant program is called JoinHands. Steve Thomas, U.S. Coordinator for Mennonite Men, explains the essence of the program in the video, Building places of faith.
JoinHands provides a way for churches launching building projects to share funds with congregations that hope to purchase a church building but don’t have the resources to carry that out.
Everence® Financial helped with the video after Thomas reached out with an interest in showing how Assembly Mennonite provided a tithe of its own construction fundraising effort to JoinHands.
Lora Nafziger, Pastor of Christian Formation and Congregational Life at Assembly Mennonite, talks on the video about Assembly needing more space to do the work of the church. Susan Nelson project coordinator at Assembly Mennonite, expressed her gratitude to JoinHands for finding a church that would benefit from Assembly’s tithe.
Shwe Htewng of Mara Christian Church near Charlotte, North Carolina, talks about being able to acquire and renovate a church building vacated by a previous congregation with the help of a JoinHands grant.
A church loan from Everence Federal Credit Union aided the Assembly Mennonite expansion project.
Jeff Shafer, Director of Creative Marketing at Everence Financial, produced the video.