Thank you and more updates

We are so grateful for everyone's encouragement and support. There are times when we start questioning the sanity of what we are doing but then someone will come along and say or do something exactly that we needed. We have only been working on the church now for a couple of months and have seen God's hand in this clearly. People are joining our launch team, offering prayers and signing on as financial partners.

Some people have asked about making a one-time donation for the church and wondered if there was anything specific we needed for start-up costs. I will list a couple of things and if you would like to help with any of them please contact us. The first thing that we need to do is become a legal entity. We want to work with a company that helps church planters get their churches running. The cost to become incorporated, get a Federal Employee Identification Number, 501c3 and a constitution drafted is $850. There are a couple of extra fees that we pay separate: $30 to the state of Indiana and $750 to the IRS. We can become incorporated and have a FEIN within a couple of weeks but the 501c3 could take up to six months but will be retroactive to the date of our incorporation. Once we are incorporated we will be a legitimate entity and can start accepting tax-deductible donations for the church.

The second item is the cost of our website. It is $40/ month to operate or $400 for the year. This has already been visited over 500 times in a little over two weeks with over 6,000 hits on it. It will be an effective ministry tool for reaching out beyond Sunday mornings.

I also wanted to address some questions people have about sending us monthly support. First, you will make the checks out to myself (Brian) and/or Karin. These are not tax-exempt and will be used for personal expenses (groceries, bills, etc...) Once we become incorporated the church will have an account and donations will be accepted separately for it. Those donations made out to "Restoration Church" will be tax-deductible and will be used to meet the church budget.

There are lots of things going on right now and we are praying for God's spirit to start preparing hearts for what he wants to do in these communities through Restoration.