The Beginning of Freedom Builders
In the spring of 1999, More Than a Carpenter Missions was formed around a simple but important question: Could we come alongside local social service agencies and the Church to serve families whose critical housing needs were falling through the cracks?
A few small projects were completed that first summer, but much of the year was spent listening and learning—meeting with agencies, understanding the needs within our community, and discovering just how many disadvantaged, elderly, and disabled families were living in unsafe or inadequate housing with nowhere else to turn.
In August of 2000, the ministry joined Freedom Ministries, and More Than a Carpenter Missions became Freedom Builders. That relationship gave us greater resources, a stronger organizational foundation, and the opportunity to better understand both the depth of the need and the role we could play in meeting it.
That year, Freedom Builders completed approximately 67 projects. More importantly, we began to see that this ministry could become much more than an occasional home-repair effort. There was a significant and growing need for an organization capable of bringing churches, volunteers, agencies, and resources together to serve families who had few other options.
Growing Into the Mission
In 2001, Freedom Builders took a significant step forward by accepting two large and challenging projects.
Working alongside the Family Independence Agency, we helped build a Habitat for Humanity home—the first Habitat home ever constructed within the city limits of Traverse City.
That same year, we completely renovated another home under an agreement with the owner that it would be rented below market rate to a mother with developmental disabilities and her two young sons. It was an opportunity not simply to repair a building, but to help provide a family with a safe and affordable place to call home.
Those projects stretched us. They taught us what was possible when organizations, churches, volunteers, and individuals worked together for the good of a family in need. They also opened the door to new relationships throughout the community.
In addition to those two major projects, Freedom Builders completed another 74 projects during 2001.
Becoming an Independent Ministry
In January of 2002, Freedom Builders separated from Freedom Ministries. The decision allowed each organization to focus more effectively on its individual calling and gave Freedom Builders the freedom to grow, develop new partnerships, and expand its ability to respond to critical housing needs.
The ministry was beginning to take shape.
What had started only a few years earlier as an effort to explore whether there was a need had become a growing network of volunteers, churches, agencies, donors, and community partners responding to families who often had nowhere else to turn.
The Need Becomes Greater
By 2003, our volunteer base continued to grow, allowing Freedom Builders to serve another 73 families.
But something else was changing.
Cuts in state funding were reducing the resources available through local social service programs. As those resources disappeared, more families were being referred to Freedom Builders—and the situations they faced were becoming increasingly serious.
The work was no longer limited to smaller repairs.
We began encountering homes with major structural problems, failed heating systems, unsafe floors, accessibility challenges, and other conditions that threatened the health and safety of the people living there. Increasingly, Freedom Builders was being asked to take on projects that required significant renovation, skilled leadership, volunteers, materials, and financial resources.
The need was growing, and so was the responsibility God had placed before us.
God Provides
That need continued to increase dramatically in 2004.
State-funded organizations had fewer financial resources available to partner with us, yet the number of families needing assistance continued to rise. The projects became larger, more complicated, and more expensive.
One of the most serious challenges was helping families whose furnaces had failed. For families living on extremely limited incomes, replacing a furnace was simply impossible. Yet in a Northern Michigan winter, going without heat could quickly become a life-threatening situation.
Then the Lord provided.
Freedom Builders was blessed to develop a relationship with a generous Christian man and his family who chose to provide the financial resources needed to replace furnaces for families who otherwise had no way to afford them.
Suddenly, one of the greatest obstacles we faced had an answer.
When a family had no heat and no resources to replace their furnace, we could respond.
Through the generosity of donors, the commitment of volunteers, the partnership of churches and community agencies, and the Lord's continued provision, Freedom Builders was able to serve another 71 families in 2004.
The needs were becoming more difficult with each passing year—but we were also learning something that would shape Freedom Builders for decades to come:
When God's people are willing to step forward, bring what they have, and serve together, seemingly impossible needs can become opportunities to demonstrate the love of Christ in very real and practical ways.
Those early years established the foundation of Freedom Builders—a ministry committed not simply to repairing homes, but to entering into the difficult places of people's lives, bringing the Church alongside them, and reminding broken and hurting families that they have not been forgotten.
