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A Brief History of Grace Church Aurora
In mid-1983, Grace Church moved into our current facility at Chambers Point Shopping Center at Mexico and Chambers. Later that same year, the church purchased 51 acres of land east of Aurora in hopes that one day it would be instrumental in helping us to have a permanent church home. An economic recession stalled that dream for a while.
In the intervening years, Grace enjoyed the help and support of many full and part-time staff members. Under the leadership of Greg and Mari West and Darrell Cosden, then students at Denver Seminary, Grace enjoyed a strong youth ministry. After they graduated, they left Grace for other ministries. David Chambless served as Minster of Music for a time. Melanie Beckstrom was hired from within Grace as Children's Director, remaining with us until her husband, Gary was transferred to San Diego. She was briefly succeeded by Don Stahl who eventually moved to New Mexico. Steve Sartin, a former Continental, briefly served as Director of Music. Rob and Karen Shive assisted us as youth ministers before moving to Michigan. We have been blessed to have such quality people working for us.
Kent Tucker remained as Senior Pastor until June 1990 when God directed him toward a different ministry. He returned to California to become Associate Pastor of Adult Ministry at Hillside Community Church in Alta Loma. During the year-long search for a permanent replacement, Marv Wooten served as interim pastor with George Goolde assisting in preaching teaching. In June 1991, Larry Hoskins joined us as Senior Pastor and is still serving in that capacity today.
Grace has chosen to design its efforts around the "Win, Build, Send" model of ministry. GCA's stated purpose is "to glorify God by lovingly making disciples who worship and obediently serve Him." It has been our privilege to send many missionaries both to foreign lands and to the inner city. In 1986, the Senior High youth group along with several adult leaders participated in a week-long missions trip to the Mexicali Valley in Baja California Norte, Mexico under the auspices of Azusa Pacific University. Every year since then, we have continued our involvement by sending a team to minister to the same small village of Tlaxcala. Our ministry there has grown from simply a Vacation Bible School program to various ministries for every age group in the village.
The vision of Grace has always looked towards building a permanent facility. So, when interest revived in moving towards that goal, and when the economic conditions opened the door to sell the land purchased in 1983, the Land Committee earnestly began to look for a buyer. That sale took place in March of 2000.
Subsequently, the Facility Action Committee (FAC) was formed to investigate future possibilities for Grace Church. Under the leadership of Al Quintana and after considering all the options, the FAC finally decided to move towards the purchase of land. A 4.51 acre parcel close to Tower and Hampden looked promising as a central location, but the asking price of $785,000 was far out of our price range of $500,000 to $535,000. The leadership decided to use the property as a "practice run" on how to present a buyer's proposal. We offered $520,000, were countered by the owners, and then made a final offer of $535,000 that was accepted by the City of Aurora!
Now, as God has provided this land, we await in eager expectation as God uses our church family and friends to provide the funds for our initial building phase that is set to begin in late 2002.
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