Sycamore Creek Church
Pickerington, Ohio
Pickerington Square Shopping Center doesn’t sound like a place of worship, but for Sycamore Creek Church it was. Established in 1995 with only 15 people in a shopping center, Sycamore Creek’s congregation quickly outgrew its space. In 2002, the church moved to a 10,000 square foot facility it built next to a high school in Pickerington, Ohio.
In a city made up largely of families with young children, Sycamore Creek, now with a membership of approximately 600, does all it can to accommodate the growth in the church and community. After adding days and times for services and still not seeing that as a lasting solution, the church began to pray for direction.
“We have really tried to maximize our space but have just reached a lid on our growth potential due to space,” Director of Administration Kristi Johnson explains. “We continued to pray as a staff and felt like God was leading us to add on and remodel our current facility.”
The congregation launched a capital campaign and implemented a two-phase plan to expand the church’s physical structures. The first phase is to build a “Next Gen” student center onto the existing facility, by adding 12,500 square feet dedicated to children’s and youth ministries. The second phase is to remodel Sycamore Creek’s current facility to accommodate additional seats in the auditorium.
Johnson explains that when the church began looking for funding, they found that banks were hesitant to finance churches, and other institutions had high interest rates. A church member suggested that they look into WatersEdge Ministry Services for a loan.
“Jerry Vaughan from WatersEdge met with us and was excited about our plan,” Johnson says. “Things moved pretty quickly from there, and we closed two weeks after receiving the offer. WatersEdge was easy to work with and very accommodating to us.”
Two weeks after closing on the $3.4 million loan in March 2019, the church broke ground on the first phase of their construction.
“We will definitely consider WatersEdge for our next phase of financing as well,” Johnson says.
Story by Taprina Milburn
