When we first came to Midland Free Church in 1990, about 80-90 people were attending, but shortly thereafter, the church began to grow. Then we exploded with growth. Over the next 15 years, we watched attendance grow to 1,500 on two different church campuses.

These years were fun, stressful, hectic, and exciting. I will never forget them!

As attendance climbed, we did the normal American thing—we built bigger facilities. We assumed the growth would never stop.

In 1996 we moved to a 14-acre campus, then in February of 2005, we moved into an even larger third campus. We beefed up our staff for the next anticipated growth phase É which we all knew was right around the corner.

But then something happened. We stopped accumulating numbers as we had for the previous 15 years. For the first time, we "leveled out" numerically. We kept attracting new people, but we also started losing more than we had before.

The new facility was so spacious that many were caught off guard by a feeling of ...