Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to move to a building that doesn't need a $5 million dollar bridge?

A building for more than 20,000 church attenders for under $5 million is not a reality anywhere near Atlanta. I "believe the best" in Andy's vision for his church. I'm sure he's prayed once or twice about the decision.

It would really cool if they could find a way to make this huge under taking a wY to bless the community to. Great marketing opportunity there. Building a bridge not only to the church but building a bridge to the community.

I was wondering about that, too, Sean. When my church did our last capital campaign for our building expansion we gave 10% of the total to a partner church in Haiti for their building project.

Certainly not the only way to do it, but it made a lot of sense.

My guess is that North Point felt that they do a lot of giving outside the church in other areas, so there was no need to tie it to this project.

Building projects can be positive things to rally around. To that extent, I am optimistic that it will be unifying for many in the church. Six years ago, dozens of men from our congregation came together to move the church garage across the property and it is still viewed as a galvanizing event for those men involved.

My concern would be the apparent lack of concern for the environment. Sure, it sounds like they got all the permissions required by law, but building a thousand foot hulking structure of steel and concrete through wetlands does not show respect for God's creation, even though it is done under the premise of love for God's people.

Admittedly, I am much more inclined to hug people before trees, but to this outside observer, it just doesn't look good.

Thanks for blogging about this initiative. We're excited about how it's going to help a lot more people access the church. It is core to our mission and success. and it's been a long time coming.

Great post. It would be good to do a whole post on different capital campaigns again. We just did one and raised in 8 months $1.7m though we were expecting $2m to come in over 3 years. People caught the vision and gave - slap bang in the middle of the GFC.

Only God.

Balancing care for creation and the infrastructure necessary for growth is a delicate balance in ANY civil engineering project, and is part of why this was debated for so long.

It is a bridge, and not a surface road, for exactly that reason—to preserve as much nature as possible

Keep in mind this is Atlanta... not exactly remote territory unfamiliar to steel & concrete.

I live in the Atlanta area, and will admit I have never visited NP. I have heard a lot about their church - opinions, experiences, etc - and I've found that sometimes I think what they're doing is spot-on with the gospel, and other times I've questioned their motives.

But recently I've found that every time I hear or read something from Andy Stanley, I see his heart for the lost and his desire to impact as many people with the gospel as he can. He is not about numbers, he is about each individual person that his church comes into contact with - inside or outside the walls.

Every time I've found myself questioning their motives is a result of listening to or reading someone else's critique or opinion. Too many people are too quick to insert their "expertise" on a situation of another church, or its leadership, when they have no knowledge of the situation outside the article they just read.

Our church is launching a fundraising campaign for several areas of mission ministry that we already actively support, although many of our members don't even know we're involved, so we developed the 0 TO 60 IN 40 DAYS campaign. Between November 15th and December 24th, we're looking to raise $60,000 to help these ministries thrive and continue ministering to those in need. You can check out more information at our website, which is at www.0to60in40.com. You can also view a promotional video I created at YouTube. I hope it inspires you and gives you an idea for your ministry.