A PLAN LARGER THAN WE KNOW

In early 1988 a small group of men who wanted to gather around God after playing basketball each week contacted Dan Carroll and asked if he would teach a Bible study at a home on 23rd Street and San Antonio in Upland. He said no, but they persisted and finally he relented. Unbeknownst to that group of men, God was moving in them. They were starting a church.

That church would one day be Water of Life Community Church.

Initially it was a slow process. Weekly Bible studies became points of healing and refreshing but Pastor Dan’s heart was overseas. One year later he left, but the men continued to meet weekly believing he would return. After Pastor Dan and his family returned from the better part of a year with Youth With A Mission, the study became a couples study and was soon to become a church. The first actual Sunday meeting took place on Sunday, October 28, 1990, when a group of twenty-one adults and eleven children gathered together to worship at the La Petite Childcare building in Rancho Cucamonga.

The first five years were a whirlwind. After a year, a hundred people called Water of Life home and we had outgrown little La Petite Childcare Center. Pastor Dan had taken a part time elementary teaching position to augment his salary that first year and he would have to resign in June to care for the church full-time. We soon relocated to Vineyard Jr. High and continued with our weekly set-up and take-down. Our set up team was fabulous and gave hundreds of hours behind the scenes to help Water of Life grow, and it did grow. After just one short year at Vineyard, we had doubled in size and we were contacted by the Evangelical Free Church that had leased and built our office space as a church in the Terra Vista business park. They were unable to make the monthly payments and wanted to know if Water of Life would like to move in. The rent was $6,000 a month and our offerings were only $3,000 a month. Oh boy, it was times like this that we came to realize God wasn’t just in this thing called Water of Life, but it was His idea and He would make it happen. We moved in and shared rent that first year with Wise Oak School. After six months, they closed down and we were on our own. By then we had added another hundred people and our attendance was over 300 each Sunday. We made the payments and God touched the people. Marriages were healed, hearts were touched, unchurched people came to Jesus, and we had our first building remodel to expand our sanctuary.

That was good for another couple of years as we began to add services, but soon we had grown to over 600 people and we were again looking for new space. We found that space a half a mile up the road at Ruth Musser Middle School and we moved our worship services and nursery there in 1996.

We were back to setting up and taking down each week, but once again the people responded to God’s call and, amazingly, Water of Life continued to grow. A short time later in the summer of 1996, Pastor Dennis Larken told Pastor Dan of an abandoned hospital over on East Avenue. An appointment was set and Pastor Dan drove back from a day at the beach to view the property. The realtor never showed up, because as he later explained, “The property has been sold to Guadalupe Boys Home already.” Several months later on a Saturday afternoon Pastor Dan was watching a college football game and when it ended, Dale Evans of Roy Rogers fame came on the tube raising money for “Guadalupe Boys Homes.” She began to talk about the neighbors not wanting their home in this property on East Avenue in Fontana and that quickly got Pastor Dan’s attention. Upon researching the situation it became clear that this deal wasn’t going to happen and the property would soon be back on the market.

The property was built and owned at that time by Community Psychiatric Centers. It had been closed in 1994 after only five years of service. After making contact with them Water of Life made their first offer on the East Avenue property. Negotiations seemed to take forever, but we finally struck a deal for $3.2 million, this number was later renegotiated to $3.5M. There had been some vandalism taking place on the property, so we wrote a letter and asked the owners to put security in place and to mow and water the landscape. Strangely enough, we didn’t get a reply for several weeks, suddenly we couldn’t get them to return our calls and finally we found out that Community Psychiatric Centers had been purchased by Vencor Hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky. They terminated our deal the same week we were to have our commitment Sunday for our first stewardship building campaign, “Possess the Land.” We were devastated, but God wasn’t! The people committed $600,000 to purchase a property that we no longer had and Pastor Jack Hayford encouraged Pastor Dan to “Believe that God will give you this property and for less money.”

It didn’t take long for Pastor Dan and the leadership team to move on to the Kmart building just below Haven and Foothill. A deal was struck and initial plans were drawn, but God wasn’t in it. Pastor Dan later said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn’t God.” He had other plans and He continued to nag Pastor Dan to call on the East Avenue property. He called and he was told for 18 months, “The property is sold, there is no chance whatsoever that you will ever own this land.” But on January 8th of 1999, on Pastor Dan’s birthday, Vencor called his home at 6:00 a.m. with an urgent message, “The property has fallen out of escrow, if you are interested make an offer in the next three hours.” Well we did, $2.5 million instead of the original $3.5 million and they accepted! Amazingly Water of Life Community Church finally had a home; one we were certain we wouldn’t outgrow for years to come. Well at least for four years, by then we had outgrown our worship center and we were again adding services. We had grown from 1,000, who moved in, to over 3,150 in four short years.

Today, we are a church family with an average weekend attendance of nearly 5,000. God has brought so many people to a healing and saving place in Him through Water of Life. We are never surprised by what He is doing anymore; so we will continue to build and make space for Him to do what He set before us, 20 years ago, “Until the Whole World Hears!”