This old video helped me see the movement of God's hand more clearly

A forgotten piece of Good Shepherd Anglican Church's history reminded me of just how far we’ve come.

Members of Good Shepherd Anglican Church praying over someone at our new church building.

Sometimes it’s good to pause and look back — not just to remember, but to see more clearly.

It’s why we celebrate birthdays, graduations and wedding anniversaries (Anne and I just marked our 40th) — to remember where we’ve been, reflect on how we got here, and consider where we’re going.

Yesterday I stumbled across a video our church — Good Shepherd Anglican in Cornelius, N.C. — made to launch a capital campaign in an effort to purchase and renovate a church building.

After 17 years of meeting at the Lake Norman YMCA, it would be the first building of our own.

I was amazed to realize it’s been six years since we began that journey. A wave of memories came rushing back, along with deep gratitude to God.

Here’s the video:

Our history at Good Shepherd

When Anne and I moved from Minneapolis to Charlotte in the summer of 2014, one of our first priorities was to find a new church home.

We visited nine different congregations — Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian. Each had something to offer, and I could imagine us worshipping at several them. But none felt quite right.

Then a friend, Huntley Paton, made a suggestion. Though he attended a Presbyterian church himself, he’d once heard a guest preacher named Kyle Wallace from a church called Good Shepherd — and he was impressed. We decided to give it a try.

We were impressed, too. Anne especially liked that Good Shepherd was liturgical, rooted in the church calendar, and drew from the Book of Common Prayer.

But the moment we knew God had led us to the right place came during the passing of the peace. We turned around — and there were Gary and Carrie Setterberg.

Years earlier, the Setterbergs had lived just blocks from us in Edina, Minnesota. Anne and Carrie had even prayed together in a moms’ group during those busy days of raising young children.

We had no idea where they had moved after they left Minnesota a couple years before we did. And yet, there they were — behind us, in a small Anglican church meeting in a YMCA in suburban Charlotte.

Only God could have orchestrated something like that.

Good Shepherd searches for a new home

Since around 2002, Good Shepherd had been gathering inside the Lake Norman YMCA. That might sound unusual, but in the Charlotte area, nearly every school, YMCA, and public space seems to double as a church on Sundays.

Still, we knew that being tucked away in a gym — largely invisible to the community the other six days of the week — made it hard to grow and even harder to serve our neighbors.

So we began looking for a place to call our own. I was serving on the vestry — our church’s governing board — when, in the span of just a few hours, I received calls from three different church members. All of them had the same news for me: a church building on West Catawba Avenue in Cornelius was going up for sale.

Here’s the sales brochure for the building:

Three separate and excited phone calls in a matter of hours was enough to convince me: God was up to something.

But that didn’t mean the path forward would be easy. In fact, there were dozens of hurdles — starting with the biggest one: how would a church of about 60 families raise the roughly $1.5 million needed to purchase and renovate the building?

The pragmatic, business side of me had its doubts. I had owned and operated a small company for nearly 20 years in Minnesota, and I knew how hard it was to raise serious money.

We brought in a professional church fundraising company. They laid out a plan and assured us that a few members would likely give far more than anyone expected.

It sounded great — but it still felt like a stretch.

But God had different plans.

Within months, we had raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars. A generous member personally guaranteed a mortgage from a local bank. The pieces were falling into place.

And I could almost hear Jesus, echoing what he said to his disciples over and over in Matthew’s Gospel: “O you of little faith, Ed, why did you doubt?”

The purchase and renovation moved quickly. We hoped to open in fall 2020, but Covid delayed us. Still, in early 2021, we gathered for worship in our very own building — for the first time.

Here are a couple of photos of the remodeling, plus what the altar looked like shortly before our first service.

The video

The video, narrated by Kyle Wallace, took me back — back to what Good Shepherd was like six years ago and just how far we’ve come since then.

Many of the faces in the video still worship with us today. Others have moved away, some have found new church homes, and a few have gone on to be with the Lord. None of our pastors from that season — Rector Kyle Wallace (he once mailed a pocket knife to me 😃), Associate Rector Jordan Kologe or Deacon Lucy Albert — are still serving at Good Shepherd. God has opened doors to new adventures for them.

I was especially moved by scenes of about 20 of us praying in the parking lot of the building we had just purchased — asking God to use it for his glory.

We remain a church with age diversity, but the video reminded me that we once had even greater generational breadth. My hope is that in this new season, under Pastor David Libbon’s leadership, we’ll see more young families and 20-somethings drawn into the life of our church.

Watching that old video reminded me that church isn’t just about buildings or programs — it’s about people, stories and seasons guided by God’s hand.

Six years ago, we took a step of faith, unsure of what lay ahead. Today, we worship in a space that once felt out of reach, shaped by sacrifice, prayer and God’s provision.

But our story isn’t finished.

Every Sunday, new faces walk through our doors. Some are searching. Some are skeptical. Some are just beginning to wonder if God might be calling them, too.

My prayer is that they’ll find what Anne and I found — a church home that feels like a gift, and a God who never stops leading his people forward.