ChurchFuture Clients

ChurchFuture's 53 current and completed clients include Lutheran, United Methodist, United Church of Christ and non-denominational churches in the Twin Cities, Duluth, and Florida. They range in size from 28 members to over 600. Locations include suburbs (19%), inner cities (32%) and urban areas (49%). Four are ethnic-specific and two meet the definition of multiracial. Sixteen of the 53 churches used the rebirth merger concept to form six new congregations.

"David Raymond, a skilled consultant and caring churchman was able to effectively lead our congregation and our local cluster of congregations into a vision for mission and ministry that we could own and develop using the tools he pro-vided during his sessions with us. He carefully and skillfully enabled us to discover together the resources we had in order to meet the common goals we established in a process that was framed by open, honest, and mutually caring conversation. David truly made it possible for us to do the work that we wanted and needed to do together without pressure or pushing his own agenda.”

— Pastor Bill KnottAbiding Savior Lutheran Church
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Client Stories

Wesley United Methodist Church in Minneapolis ChurchFuture is currently part of a team effort to come up with a sustainable plan to preserve the Historic Wesley Church building in Downtown Minneapolis for community and church purposes. Dave’s co-consultants are Joy Skjegstad and Dale Arendt. “A Future for Minneapolis’s Wesley Building” describes this process, or watch this KSTP-TV News Story.

Another historic downtown Minneapolis church, Augustana Lutheran, is a neighborhood-oriented church that lost its neighborhood due to freeways and development. Augustana was the mother or grandmother church to 7 twin cities churches, including Mt. Olivet, and is the founder of Community Emergency Service, a major food shelf and social service provider. Dave Raymond was engaged in May, 2011 to help Augustana’s leaders identify their options and come to a missional decision about their future. In early September the congregations voted on a plan to sell the building, move to the Community Emergency Service building, and redevelop as a congregation to reach and serve the people around its new location. You can read about the building and its possible sale in this article.

ChurchFuture served as the consultant for two rebirth mergers in Northeast Minneapolis. Northeast Community Lutheran Church was formed in 2007 out of three struggling nearby churches. In 2010 the new church bought a former elementary school and formed the Grace Center for Community Life, using the proceeds from the sale of the beautiful but out-of-date former church buildings. Grace Center is the home of both Northeast Community and Mercy Street Lutheran Churches, Fraser Academy Charter School, a music school, food shelf and several other community groups. Raymond served as the planning and financing consultant for Grace Center. In 2010 two nearby Methodist churches formed the Northeast United Methodist Church. That church is now noted for its community gardens.

In South Minneapolis two churches formed Living Spirit United Methodist Church in a 2009 restart merger.

Spirit of Grace Lutheran Church in Pasco County, Florida, is a restart merger formed out of five churches, four of which were seriously struggling. Spirit of Grace has two campuses, one at each end of the county.

Often churches that engage consultants are in trouble, but Falcon Heights United Church of Christ in suburban St. Paul was doing fine when it engaged ChurchFuture to guide a strategic planning process to equip the congregation for new service and new growth in the 21^st century. The resulting plan deals with issues in that congregation’s culture as well as a vision and action steps for the future. The congregation’s new tag line is simple: “Worship creatively. Love openly. Grow joyfully.”