Homesteading The ‘Family Capital of the World:’ A Look At Grace City Church’s Expansion Plans

Dominick Bonny is a columnist and contributor to Source ONE News 

When Josh McPherson and Grace City Church leaders launched the “Be Fruitful” fundraising campaign last fall their goal was to raise $10 million – a million a week for 10 weeks.

According to McPherson, the campaign was designed to get “our people to give beyond their normal tithes and offerings” for the fourth phase of building on their Wenatchee compound, the establishment of a private Christian school and an offshoot church in Rome, Georgia.

By the end of those 10 weeks members had pledged $15.5 million.

Those pledges are to be deposited into GCC coffers over the next two years and will fund the construction of a recording studio, a “town square,” a food court, a “grain elevator,” a schoolhouse, and more. On Feb. 28, GCC’s Pastor of Finances Kyle Strong submitted an amended conditional use permit that if approved by the city of Wenatchee will allow GCC to expand its square footage at its Sunnyslope compound from 12,000 to 30,000 square feet with the addition of the schoolhouse and grain elevator. There’s no mention of the Adventure Playland structure, though. You can view that amended CUP here.

In a glossy 33-page publication titled “Be Fruitful: Grace City Resource Initiative 2023-2025” McPherson lays out exactly what they plan to spend the money on, as well as the 11-month planning process that included a “4-day blue-sky burn” trip to Disneyland, complete with a “backstage pass and world-class tour” from former Disney “Imagineer” Mel McGowan. The trip also included a stop-off in Phoenix to visit Mark Driscoll’s Trinity Church.

Driscoll is the disgraced founder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and one of McPherson’s closest friends and mentors. Driscoll and Mars Hill gained national fame and an international platform before the organization imploded amid lawsuits and allegations of racketeering, fraud and abuse.

In “Be Fruitful,” McPherson lays out a vision for a future in which GCC succeeds where Mars Hill failed. In the “quick facts” section of the publication, McPherson writes that he’d like to establish schools across the state, and beyond.

“Our dreams for the school include buying property, acquiring facilities, building a business and education training center with full sports complex, funding an endowment to start more schools all over the state, and more,” he wrote. “In other words, we have more vision than resources. We are committed to being ready to build as the Lord provides. If you have the ability to accelerate any of these dreams with Legacy gifts, please reach out to Executive Pastor Kyle Strong.”

On page one McPherson starts things out by repeating GCC’s origin story, takes aim at his enemies, and frames the campaign as a “challenge to the craziness of our culture.”

“It’s our response to evil and anarchy,” he wrote. “It’s our answer to political tyranny and theological apostasy and sexual perversions and abhorrent morality running rampant in our day.”

You can read the forward address in full below.

In this article, we’ll break down this publication and GCC’s “Strategic Timeline” for 2024 and 2025.

Describing his followers as “pioneers” and “homesteaders,” McPherson intertwines the stories of white settlers traveling west and he and his followers – equating the ordeal they have gone through to that of folks on the Oregon Trail.

“By the time most wagon trains arrived at their destinations, the parties were nearly unrecognizable from when they had begun,” he wrote. “Plague, sickness, injury, and death. Children were born. Spouses died. Men and women remarried, more out of pragmatism than love.”

It took courage and fortitude to make it West and “disunity and dissenters” attempted to thwart progress the entire way, he wrote. Opposition also came from “roving Indians, bandits, robbers.”

McPherson and his followers have suffered and faced great hardships too, although it’s hard to tell which are metaphors and which are literal.

“We have survived hostile attacks, raiding bandits, scurvy, accidents, elements, cowardice, disunity, grumbling, illness, drought, death,” he wrote. “We have backtracked, fixed broken wheels, weathered storms, gone without food, buried our dead, remarried, birthed children and buried children – still we’ve pressed on.”

After setting the tone of rugged individualism triumphing over insurmountable odds, he then turned to the details of what he and GCC leaders want to accomplish with the “Be Fruitful” campaign. He starts by explaining what the goal of the campaign.

“Our first goal is 100% participation from those who call Grace City home,” he wrote.

He also answered a question he must get a lot because he addresses it in almost every GCC publication I’ve come across, and that is McPherson’s denominational affiliation. He insists GCC is non-denominational and they don’t have “to answer to any outside politics or agendas.”

However, Driscoll’s book, “Real Marriage” is required reading for GCC couples, Driscoll and his wife have visited and preached at GCC, and McPherson and his followers even parrot Driscoll’s terminology and phrasing verbatim, like “Slay the Dragon.” That term is the title of one of Driscoll’s sermons about a year ago and it;s also a phrase GCC’s Project Mancard boys chanted at the end of the inaugural year’s rite of passage weekend.

While it’s clear McPherson’s theology and worldview are patterned after Driscoll’s, two or three churches aren’t a denomination. But the connection to Driscoll should not be understated.

A “strategic timeline” on pages 20 and 21 lays out what McPherson and GCC leaders want to accomplish and when. And according to that timeline, the spring and summer of 2024 are going to be busy.

They plan to start remodeling King’s Orchard Church to have it ready to be the home of Garden City Academy by the fall. That process was initially held up after the City of Wenatchee canceled the hearing to review their application for a conditional use permit after massive community feedback and additional questions arose about traffic as well as who will be carrying guns on campus.

City officials reviewed that reapplication and a public hearing has been scheduled for Tuesday, March 26 at 3:00 pm, according to Ruth Traxler with the City of Wenatchee. If GCC leaders get their conditional use permit approved by the city they’ll likely be able to remodel the building and open GCA in the fall on schedule.

The timeline is broken up into themes with the titles: “Be Fruitful,” “We Strong,” “Arrows,” “#Image” and “The Divine Spark.” According to the timeline, they have moved out of the “Be Fruitful” phase and into “We Strong,” and the events planned in this phase include the “WE Conference,” “WE Encounters” and “Dating4Mating.”

Once the Phase 4 building projects are complete in the spring of next year and the recording studio is ready, GCC will launch the “Strongerman Digital Universe” podcast.

On pages eight and nine, McPherson goes into detail about that studio and the other additions to the Wenatchee compound. The schoolhouse is inspired by the Hartline School on Highway 2 South of Grand Coulee, the “Adventure Play Land” is modeled after Tom Sawyer’s island, and the “Town Square” will be 9,000 square feet of hardscape protected from wind that will “serve as a venue for receptions, live music concerts, outdoor movie nights and more.”

And then there’s the Vector Lecture Halls. McPherson describes the design they’re going for with the space dedicated to their college alternative.

“Modeled after the classic collegial lecture halls of times past–think Indiana Jones classroom meets aristotelian architecture…elevated seating, dark hardwood, classic lines,” he wrote.

Additional projects include a “Loop Trail” and a Cafe.

The publication also gives the chronological origin stories for how Garden City Academy the church plant in Rome, Georgia came to be. On Page 25 the storyline for GCA includes a selfie of McPherson in Washington DC with the Washington Monument and its reflecting pool behind him. The caption says he came up with the name for the school while “walking the monument in DC.”

The decision to plant a church in Rome came about a year after Josh and his wife Sharon met John and Bekah Lovell on a “Warrior Poet Society” tour of World War II sites in Europe. Lovell is a former Army Ranger and a “national bestselling author,” according to McPherson’s bio of him in the booklet. Lovell also runs a business leading tours of Europe and “The Holy Land” as well as a popular YouTube personality who sells survival gear, firearm accessories, and tactical fashions that cater to an audience of wealthy “prepper” types. “Prepping” is a subculture in which adherents stock up food, weapons, fuel, and other resources in preparation for some apocalyptic event – supernatural or otherwise.

One of the items Lovell sells on his website is a pen you can use to stab people.

It’s called the WPS Tactical Pen and according to Lovell’s site it’s a “multi-functional EDC tool with which you can quickly and easily pen important intel or incapacitate unwanted pests or perps.”

It also serves as a cigar tube.

The last pages list the pastoral leadership team, which is McPherson, Adam James, Kent McMullen and Kyle Strong, pastor of finances.

They also list the “Elder Support & Advisory Team” which consists of Josh Carlson, co-founder of Iceberg and a corporate executive, Dave Haehl, owner of Haehl Sales, Kirk Hudson, general manager of the Chelan County PUD, Greg McPherson, Josh’s dad, Gregg Smith, owner of Smith Excavation and KBI Construction, Mike Taylor, owner of Taylor Orchards Inc. and Senior VP for business development at Stemilt and Jeff Weber, CEO or Speiro & Form Hero, president of Firefly and co-owner of Storyteam Inc.

KBI Construction, or Kingdom Builders Incorporated, is GCC’s in-house construction company that provides most of the work done on the compound for the cost of materials.

“Kingdom Builders Incorporated is a different kind of business building a better kind of world, where business and generosity meet to advance the mission of the Church,” the description reads. “KBI built Phase 3, saving us over $1M in construction costs. As a commercial construction company, their goal is to build the Kingdom through providing superior services at wholesale costs to Grace City…essentially donating their profit to our church.”

McPherson and GCC’s creative ways to get things built for little-to-no cost is something I have covered before. But it’s their the ability to raise funds through members’ businesses that is an area of this story we will explore further in the near future.

GCC Elder Jeff Weber isn’t just the president of Firefly, co-owner of Storyteam Inc. and CEO of Sperio & Form Hero, he and his wife also bought Java Dog Espresso last fall.

Former longtime employees of that business say they were pushed out and replaced with members of Grace City Church, and report being mistreated, demeaned, and bullied by Weber and his wife.

I spoke with some of those employees recently, as well as former employees of Firefly, and will have a piece about that in the near future. In that piece, we’ll also take a look at the creative financial advice GCC leaders have for members who own businesses.

Grace City Church’s YouTube channel was rebranded as simply “Josh McPherson” recently and the handle is now “@StrongerManNxn.”

Although I mentioned it above, I wanted to mention the CUP hearing for the application to use King’s Orchard Church on March 26. The public comments submitted in February will be included in the file the hearing examiner reviews and in the staff report, according to Traxler.

Here’s the notice she sent that will also be posted at King’s Orchard.

One of the perks for founding members and sustaining subscribers are annual events and I plan to have one of those this spring/early summer, so look for more news about that coming soon. At those events, I bring selected research materials and other resources I’ve collected, like this “Be Fruitful” booklet and other GCC publications for folks to peruse.

But more than that these events provide a fun social way to interact with folks who support my work, and if you’re reading this you are one of those people. So thank you!

Source: yoursourceone.com