FAYETTEVILLE, GA -- A church in Fayetteville is closing its doors but not its hearts. Rolling Hills Baptist Church is challenging traditional ideas and selling the church and using the money to help people.
It took about a year for the church to find a buyer. On Monday, they closed on a sale to a Peachtree City church. It is now time for Senior Pastor Frank Mercer and more than 100 parishioners to fly free of the four walls that have surrounded their congregation for more than 20-years. "We feel free, free to do what god commands us to do," Pastor Mercer said about the sale.
The church has a new mission. Instead of investing in the property that consumed most of their budget, they will use the more than $1-million dollars from the sale to invest in people who have needs. "It's just a way of looking at this property differently," Pastor Mercer said. "We saw it as an asset we could liquidate and turn around and use that resource to meet the needs of people."
In October of 2008, the church decided to sell the building and the 20-acres it sits on. Pastor Mercer said the church was too much of a burden on his cash-strapped church members.
The congregation will celebrate its last service this Sunday at the church on Redwine Road in Fayetteville. The next Sunday the congregation will begin to meet at the Tinseltown Movie Theater on Pavilion Parkway in Fayetteville. Pastor Mercer said the cost of renting the theater is about a third of the cost to operate the current church.
"What we're looking at this Sunday is more of a hello than a goodbye," he said. "We don't see this as a sad thing at all, we're moving forward with a lot of confidence and a lot of joy."
Pastor Mercer said they may change the name of the church. He said he's considering the name the church uses on its web site, www.wheresthesteeple.org.
For his church, it's not about where you meet together; it's about what you do together.
