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    Willow Creek Does Their Own “Extreme Home Makeover”

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    Willow Creek Does Their Own “Extreme Home Makeover”

    At least 300 volunteers from Willow Creek and another organization have come together to construct a new, 1,600-square-foot split-level home that will be built in just one week...

    Finding herself financially strapped and emotionally drained after a bitter divorce, Rajean Johnson needed help finding a place to live.

    Johnson turned to her parents, Ruby and Dennis Johnson, who emptied their retirement account and bought a "handyman special" in Lake Zurich for Rajean and her two young sons. The retired couple planned to live there as well.

    But as the family began to make needed repairs, they discovered the formally foreclosed home was in such bad shape, it needed to be torn down.

    "My parents used all of their retirement money to buy the house. To find out it was uninhabitable was devastating," said Johnson, 35. "All five of us faced being homeless."

    Now desperate, Johnson, a member of Willow Creek Community Church, turned to her pastors for help.

    And help they did.

    The South Barrington church selected Johnson as a recipient in their "Blitz Build" ministry.

    At least 300 volunteers from Willow Creek and a new organization called Love In the Name of Christ, Southwest, have come together to construct a new, 1,600-square-foot split-level home for the Johnsons.

    And, remarkably, the house is expected to be built in just one week. Work began last Saturday and should be complete by this weekend.

    "It's incredible," Johnson said. "Our whole family would be homeless if these people didn't help."

    Willow Creek Pastor Marie Shepherd said Johnson first asked if church members could help with some simple repairs. Those repairs led to the disappointing discoveries of major problems.

    "It was one thing after another," Shepherd said. "We started out replacing some windows, floor tile and a couple of doors and then realized there were much bigger problems. The drywall was warped, the floorboards were rotten and there was mold upstairs. It was obvious the place had to be condemned."

    Johnson's parents bought the home from foreclosure and had the place checked out by a home inspector. Shepherd said the inspector missed the major problems.

    Shepherd said Johnson and her two young sons were in a desperate situation.

    "If we or someone else didn't help them, they would be homeless," Shepherd said. "Our job is to follow God's leading and based on how this all came together in terms of the volunteers and donations, it really seems that God has his hand on this."

    // I just want to hear Bill Hybels yell out, "BusDriver... MOVE THAT BUS!"

    You can read more here...

    Comments

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    1. Peter Hamm on Wed, October 07, 2009

      What an AMAZINGLY cool way to “be the church”. Kudos to you, Willow Creek!

    2. Gerry on Wed, October 07, 2009

      Hey, aren’t we supposed to reject churches like Willow because they aren’t ‘emerging’, they are ‘missional’ enough?  They are too superficial and don’t challenge people and are only interested in entertaining people…actually I spent nine years at Willow following my divorce and am not surprised by thia at all.  To me, this is not news.

    3. Jerry on Wed, October 07, 2009

      Great job Willow and Love In the Name of Christ!  The home inspector? That’s another story. You need some training!

    4. rbud on Thu, October 08, 2009

      I think it’s a very good thing that Willow has done here. But why don’t I feel very excited about it? Is this the only house they’ve built? It just seems to me that with their huge amount of resources that they could easily and without any sacrifice repeat this kind of ministry work over and over again for hundreds of people. So what makes this event so unique?

      Now, if a small church did this, a church that had to sacrifice to do it, then I’d be excited.

    5. Peter Hamm on Thu, October 08, 2009

      rbud,

      I believe they have lost count of the automobiles they have restored and given, at no cost, to single moms. Does that help?

    6. David Buckham on Sat, October 10, 2009

      Great story.  Rock on Willow.

      all about Christ,
      David Buckham

    7. David Whitten on Mon, October 12, 2009

      A church near Tampa, Florida which is no where near the size of Willow did this same thing for a single mom with 3 kids last year.  Church gave over 75K to construct a brand new home…you don’t have to be a mega-church to be “the church”

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