Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
Being a church planter was about the last thing Brandon Beals wanted to do. “I had friends who had planted churches, and they hadn’t gone well,” he says. “Most of them not only left their church plant but also left the church all together.”
God had other plans, however. Today, Beals is pastoring Venture Church, a multisite church plant that is winning souls in Seattle by the hundreds.
The original location, Mill Creek, Wash., considered part of greater Seattle, presented many challenges to church planters. Not only do less than one-fourth of the population have any religious affiliation, but the city has few unoccupied buildings. Additionally, environmental issues and wetlands make building and zoning particularly difficult. These factors, coupled with the fact that the city now is entirely built out, often leave new church planters with more problems than solutions. But Beals persevered and officially launched the church in 2004.
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Within the first 10 years, the church had outgrown eight locations, and leader knew they needed to build a permanent church home. In 2016, one of the last empty lots in the city, which was supposed to have 60 homes built on it, miraculously became the land on which the first and only new church building was built: Venture Church.
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Venture Church has continued to experience steady growth. Beals believes this is a result of God honoring the hard work and prayers of those who persevered through the hardships of the launch and build and of those who continue to live their lives “on mission.” In fact, the church sees an average of 250 guests each month.
“God is really moving in the Seattle area. and churches are seeing moves of the Holy Spirit, miracles, radical conversions and things that the city hasn’t seen or experienced before,” Beals told AG News. The prayer of Venture Church is to see so many salvations in the next few years that the city of Seattle no longer will be found on the list of “least churched cities in America.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
