On July 22, Lead Pastors Andrew and Christina Gard announced the development of another Grace City Church location, the Grace City Church Lakeside Campus.

Grace City Church is a Hillsong family church located at 730 South Florida Avenue. About a year to a year and a half after opening, Grace City began to outgrow their location and was hosting up to five church services a weekend.

“In late September it will be our three-year anniversary. I’ve always had high expectations about everything, and so I thought it would go well, but I didn’t think it would go quite this well,” says Lead Pastor Andrew Gard.

If you’ve ever visited Grace City Church you will notice a very specific culture among the people that gather there. There is an entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of leadership, where most members of Grace City have a desire to thrive in their area of influence to make Lakeland a better place.

“A lot of that I think comes from this question that we always ask ourselves: ‘If Grace City went away tomorrow, would our city even know?’ We didn’t just start Grace City so that we’d have a cool place for people to go on Sundays. We started GC because we want to see our city transformed through the Gospel…we want people in our church to be inspired to do what God’s called them to do,” says Andrew Gard.

“Heart for the House is an annual campaign for people who call Grace City Church home, have a heart for generosity, and want to give above and beyond their tithes and offerings for the church to go further, faster,” says Stewardship Pastor Michael Mutz.

At last year’s Heart for the House, the church announced their desire to find a bridge campus – a second location to better serve their growing congregation.  “We were excited to find out that within one year from Heart for the House, we’d have the opportunity to actually obtain the bridge campus,” says Mutz.

Grace City Church’s Lakeside Campus is located at 1736 New Jersey Avenue with plans to open its doors in the fall of 2018. On July 23, Grace City held a Work Day at their Lakeside Campus to begin renovations by inviting all of their members and staff to help rip out floors and carpet, tear down walls and ceilings, and help clean the building to begin renovations.

Grace City Church’s Lakeside Campus plans to have individual age group classrooms for kids’ church and a recording studio for Grace City Music to work on albums and projects.

The Lakeside Campus Building is owned by Geneva Classical Academy, and Grace City Church will lease an unused portion of the building from Geneva.

“I think it’s really incredible that the money our church generously gave last year really set us up to be able to take this step this year,” says Mutz.