Foothills Community Church
Arvada, Colorado
Stephen Hinson was frustrated with his bank.
Foothills Community Church, where he serves as operations pastor, had received an offer from the city to purchase a piece of the church’s land to build a new police substation. The sale would protect the community and provide Foothills with funds to refinance the mortgage on its building. Everyone saw it as a win-win — except Foothills’ bank.
“We were running into roadblock after roadblock with our lender,” Hinson says. “They just did not understand how church finances work.”
Foothills isn’t your typical Southern Baptist congregation. Nestled in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, the church meets in a movie theater it purchased in 2006 and converted into a worship space. “People come to us who might not otherwise darken the door of a traditional building with a giant cross on top,” Hinson says.
As Foothills’ bank continued to stall, Hinson realized he needed a lender who understood ministry. He contacted WatersEdge Ministry Services and completed an online loan application to begin the refinance. Less than 30 days later, the church closed the loan with WatersEdge for $2 million.
“I can’t say enough great things about their process,” Hinson says. “They were able to move as fast as we wanted to move. From my first interaction with WatersEdge until the time we closed was half the time it took just to navigate the conversation with our bank about getting a lien release!”
There was an added bonus from refinancing with WatersEdge that Hinson says spoke powerfully to the church’s board: interest from Foothills’ loan would be given back to ministry.
“We had a pretty good interest rate with our original lender,” Hinson says. “But our lender was a bank, and the $75,000 in interest that they earned each year on our debt was going right back into their bottom line.”
Thanks to the refinance with WatersEdge, who matched the bank’s interest rate, that $75,000 is now poured back into Southern Baptist ministries across the country.
Overall, Hinson says the refinance has helped Foothills position itself for new growth, much of which is coming as a result of the church’s emphasis on community outreach ministries. These ministries include a food pantry that serves more than 60 families each month as well as “Packs of Hope,” a ministry that provides new clothes, toiletries and other essentials to more than 2,000 children entering Colorado’s foster care system each year.
“Our ability to meet the needs of people where they are will be our best opportunity to have an open conversation with them about Jesus,” Hinson says.
