New Building Project

A PLAN
FOR THE FUTURE

In Mantua, Italy…

A PLAN
FOR THE FUTURE

In Mantua, Italy…

 

A bit about us

The Sola Grazia Church (ChiesaSolaGrazia.it/eng/) is a church planting work started in 2008. It currently gathers about 50 people and enjoys the fellowship of a wide variety of churches, pastors and brothers in Italy and around the world.

The church is strong in biblical doctrines, outreach and discipleship. We are part of the FIRE FELLOWSHIP network (firefellowship.org) and are partnering with HeartCry Missionary Society (HeartCryMissionary.com).

The Lord has been so faithful during the past years. The church is growing and there is a sweet sense of harmony and love among the believers. Sola Grazia Church is a fantastic mix of old and young believers that love the Lord – a great group of people who are eager to serve and give with sacrifice.

A desire to invest in God’s future work

Ever since the beginning, we have been renting the building in which we worship. After 11 years, we have spent about $200,000 in rent alone. Recently we have begun to ask ourselves: ‘Should we be wasting all this money in rent payments? What if the Lord gives us 10 or 100 more years? Is it not wiser to buy a place as an investment in the future?’

Nevertheless, we were not deliberately looking for a property or seeking a new challenge for 2018. It was a good friend of ours who told us about a property that recently became available on the market. After careful consideration, we think this property presents a great opportunity for our church and more than meets our needs as far as space, flexibility and accessibility. Local authorities have told us the church can be settled in the new site with no problem.

Help us fund it!

New church chart

PHASE 1 – $400,000
PURCHASING THE BUILDING

PHASE 2 – $150,000
INTERNAL REPAIRS AND RENOVATIONS

Moving furniture, kitchen and staff from old to new building, fixing the electrical system, setting the translation system, painting, fixing the audio system, new lighting system, fixing the heating system, new stage, sunday school rooms renovation, kitchen renovation, office renovation, guest room, restrooms, new books store.

PHASE 3 – $50,000
EXTERNAL WORK

Exterior and entrance repair, landscaping, new gates, exterior painting

Make a donation

A building with great potential

The building is in need of some work and remodeling, but shows great potential. It is easily accessible and near the town center, offers large interior spaces which allow for plenty of future growth, and will not need major structural changes for it to suit our needs.

Help buy & remodel

Video presentation

by Pastor Andrea Artioli

Faces of Chiesa Sola Grazia

How to give

The best way to make a donation is through Entrusted Word Ministries’ funding page:

Donate now

You may also write to:

Entrusted Word Ministries
P.O. Box 1061
Littleton, CO 80160
www.entrustedword.org
720-641-9414

Please specify: Sola Grazia Building (Fund #4611)

Giuseppe’s story

Giuseppe

A testimony of how God has been working through Sola Grazia ministries

Giuseppe’s life is worth of a written biography. He is a true trophy of the grace of Christ having its way with a man’s heart. Born into a poor family in the suburb of Mantua, 52 years ago, his family rejected him and never considered him worthy of anything. At 14 years-old, Giuseppe left home in desperation, shut the door and never looked back, hoping to start a new beginning and attempting to find his place in the world, but in all the wrong places.

For about 30 years, his life was a real mess. Alcohol, drugs, stealing money and things, poverty, loneliness, and prison and it seemed, the same destructive pattern was occurring over and over again. It was like an endless circle. Total hopelessness. One night, police caught him again. It was one of the many times. The judge reading to Giuseppe the accusations against him said…

Continue reading

“This is incredible, the list of all your crimes is much too long.”

That night, while in the prison restroom, he bowed down on his knees and started to pray and cry out to God, “Lord, if you are real, please come now and rescue me. I cannot make it without you. I am a sinner and I need your help.”

In prison, the Catholic priest, who was an atheist, could not give any answers to Giuseppe’s many questions about God and about faith. After few months, the judge finally allowed him to be under house arrest for a period of 2 years. One day, Jehovah Witness came to his door but thank God, they didn’t make any sense to Giuseppe.

Then Mario from our church, Sola Grazia, received a request from a Swiss Mission to go and visit Giuseppe because he had requested a Bible study while in jail. Mario, a member of our church for many years, went to visit Giuseppe at his home. Mario, who always tells it like it is, said to Giuseppe, “I do not have any time to waste, I want to tell you about Jesus and the Gospel message. And I will tell you only what the Bible says.”

Suddenly, Giuseppe’s eyes were opened as if he had somehow been waiting to hear these words all of his life. For 2 years, our church visited Giuseppe 3 times a week, reading the Word with him, answering his questions and praying together. I will never forget the day when Giuseppe was being threatened by three friends from his previous life, who wanted money from him. The result? We had two policemen sitting around the table with us, eyes wide open, listening to our Bible study for 3 hours. Thank God those old friends… never came!

Today, Giuseppe is a pillar of our church and soon he will soon be recognized as a deacon of Sola Grazia. Praise God! This is just one of the many stories of lives that have been touched and changes by the ministry of our church, Sola Grazia.

God’s faithfulness in spite of our humanity…

Second Timothy 2:13, in summary, reminds us that God remains faithful to us even as sinners because He cannot deny Himself. The true Gospel of grace is wonderfully good news for us sinners. But there are still so many, hundreds, thousands, here in Italy, that still need to hear the message of God’s amazing gospel of grace. And so, God, in His unending faithfulness, is answering a very old prayer of ours. Even if we had forgotten this prayer, God remembered.

For 11 years, our church has been blessed to meet in an older building, paying rent. Over all we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars towards rent because we didn’t really have a choice. And of course, we praise God that all sorts of wonderful ministry has taken place in this small, older building. But in the last couple years, a big question of our leaders and church members has been: “Do we really need to spend all that money on a rental? What will happen if the Lord give us 10 or 100 more years? Is it not wiser to buy something for the future? Do we have faith that God wants to do more than we could ever imagine or think?”

Having said this, God always seems to surprise us when we are not expecting it. We were not looking for a property and the pastor, Andrea Artioli, was not looking for a new challenge for 2018. But a good friend of our ministry always noted how we had such a small place filled with people and not enough space in which to put them. Without saying anything to us, he was secretly wondering if there might be a better location for us, where we could really grow and help many others.

That’s why we are writing you. This friend has made us aware of an incredible new location that meets our needs and would give us so many opportunities to grow and to do more ministry. But then we wondered, with all the Italian laws, if they would permit us to move there. But local authorities have told us the church can be settle in the new site with no problem. As well, this building will give us much more visibility in the way we can use it to teach, evangelize, disciple, hold national conferences and training seminars and many other ministry activities.

We would like to prayerfully ask you to consider the possibility of helping us in this time. Given what we would pay monthly for this new location is so close to what we are paying in our current rent, but more than double the size of our old building, and it would be our own building as a church to adapt to our needs? This is why we ask you to consider helping support us in this time… we truly need your support in this exciting but challenging decision…