Church Expansion Helps Expand the Church

Churches often raise money for their own expansion projects. But First Christian Reformed Church in Sioux Falls, S.D., tithed its own expansion offering to help expand the church in the Dominican Republic.

It all started when Dave Rosenboom and his wife, Tammy, were invited on a business trip to the Dominican Republic. There they heard about a church in Canada who was helping one of the local churches in the Dominican Republic by giving part of their own church’s building fund. Inspired and encouraged, Dave took the idea back with him to his church council.

The church decided to use 10 percent of its expansion project fund ($50,000) to support a church in the Dominican. Recently a group from Sioux Falls went to work alongside church members in the Dominican Republic in building their church. The church hopes to send a team every three years.

Church member Jason Tinklenberg was on this most recent team. “The Holy Spirit is alive and at work in the hearts of the Dominican people. They are a hopeful and faithful body of believers who witnessed to us and encouraged us as much as vice versa,” he said. “I think both of us parted ways encouraged that God loves us and wants to encourage and bless us in spite of our sins and shortcomings.”