Our story is 25 years in the making. Christian Life Church began in Temple Texas in the early 1990’s with the vision and dream of Pastor Rick and Kathy Gillis:

“We believe a Great Commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission builds a Great Church!” The Great Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart…soul…and mind…and Love your Neighbor as yourself. (Matt. 22:36-40)  The Great Commission: “Go and Make Disciples…baptizing them…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28: 19-20)

In 2004,  CLC grew to a second location in the neighboring town of Killeen.  We began in the living room of a beloved member's home and quickly grew in to a mobile campus.  In the spring of 2013 we began exploring the options of purchasing a permanent home for our mobile campus.  We were blessed to discover that it was possible for us to borrow the money for the new campus at a payment that was less than the current mortgage on Temple and the rent for the Killeen campus.  Overjoyed with the news, we moved forward with the land purchase and began work on the new building.

In the fall of 2014 we broke ground and began construction on our beautiful Church on the hill. The contractor began with the foundation work after some delays with permitting. This seemed to be expected but we would later find out that it was anything but.  The building quickly began to take shape and before we knew it, we could see what was going to be our new church home.  The congregation pulled together with “sweat equity” putting in countless hours hanging sheetrock, taping and floating, texturing and painting.  We then experienced more of what seemed like typical delays,  from waiting for days or weeks for contractors to show up, jobs half done, although frustrated, we pressed forward in faith to complete our building.

But this is where our story stops.  Those delays turned in to the construction nightmares that you only read about yet, instead of reading it, we were living it.  The contractor is not able to complete the job.  We quickly discovered that he was robbing Peter to pay Paul.  He informed us that he does not have the money to finish our building.  With each passing week we are hit with liens from sub contractors for payment that was never made, but we, in good faith have paid the contractor. 

How can this happen?  Didn’t you hire a reputable contractor? Yes, he was currently building a multi-million dollar commercial building in our town, references checked out and he seemed to be the guy.  We now know that the multi-million dollar building was also experiencing difficulties and has been involved in litigation with the contractor.  We have retained a lawyer and are pursuing all the avenues that our legal system allows, however, this still doesn’t get our building finished.

We are currently 90% complete in a building we can not occupy.  The bank has frozen all of the funds and can’t release any more until the liens are paid. To make matters worse, we combined both campuses into one church loan meaning if we can not complete our building, we could lose both churches!

This is where our real story begins, where faith is tested and victory is won!  We are facing a mountain too big to climb and stepping out in faith to ask for help to complete a vision that was planted so many years ago!  This church is not just a home for us, but a place to change the lives of people here in central Texas!