Editor’s Note: Several PCA churches have recently moved into church buildings previously used by other congregations. In the process, each congregation has witnessed the blessings of a physical worship space and encountered unique opportunities to serve their communities. This week we will feature their stories of God’s provision. Read the previous installment here. 

Friend of Sinners Church: God’s Generosity Amidst Poverty 

Friend of Sinners Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has followed the Lord’s leading from a potato chip factory to a historic Methodist church building. 

Friend of Sinners began Sunday services as a “scratch plant” –  a church plant with few or no existing support resources in the community – in October 2016, first meeting at a school. In 2018, the church began renting another meeting place: a second-floor room in an old Geiser’s potato chip factory that had been purchased by a ministry. 

“Basically it was a shop floor, very rustic, that you would see in any manufacturing plant,” Pastor Dan Quakkelaar said. 

The factory location was challenging for Quakkelaar’s congregation. The stairs in the building and the lack of nursery and office space made life difficult for many congregants and Quakkelaar himself. And the building’s location made it difficult to reach the neighborhood.  According to Quakkelaar, everything west of the factory is commercial, and everything east residential. 

“We had half of a neighborhood to pursue, and it was highly transient – people moving to Milwaukee from Chicago, lots of addictions, lots of drugs, lots of prostitution.” he said.  

The factory is also situated near neighborhoods that Quakkelaar called Milwaukee’s “hood of the hood.” Nonetheless, Friend of Sinners Church became a particularized church in 2021 – which Quakkelaar noted “is very unusual for a neighborhood that has mostly single women raising children.”

Friend of Sinners soon began searching for another building, though purchasing a building seemed an unlikely prospect. Quakkelaar shared that his congregation is poor, and the average household income in the neighborhood around Friend of Sinners is about $40,000.

The church eventually found a seemingly perfect building, a German Methodist church built in 1911 on Auer Avenue. The building stands in a residential area, also near the “hood of the hood,” according to Quakkelaar. Chosen Generation Church owned the building but could no longer maintain it. 

Friend of Sinners had saved enough to pay a 20% down payment on Chosen Generation’s building, which was priced at $249,000, yet no bank would work with Friend of Sinners to purchase the building. 

“Every bank, even the bank we were banking at – they all said no,” Quakkelaar said, “So I got very depressed – not depressed in an ungodly way, but depressed in a David-pleading-with-God-in-the-Psalms kind of way. I was praying over it, oftentimes with tears.”

After a season of prayer, Quakkelaar’s depression changed into contentment. 

“I said [to God], ‘If you want me to die serving in this old potato chip factory, I’ll do it.’ And I was content. This contentment came over me, and I was okay with it, and I just kept going.” 

Four months later, Quakkelaar sat talking with his mentor, Chris Vogel, when Vogel asked, “Did you get the big donation yet?” After some confusion, Quakkelaar checked his bank account to find an additional $200,000 dollars in it. Vogel told Quakkelaar that an anonymous donor gifted this money to Friend of Sinners so the church could find a building.

Quakkelaar shared the news with his congregation the next Sunday, which responded with tears and cheers. After celebration came fasting and a congregational meeting. The congregation voted to authorize the elders to make an offer on any building they deemed appropriate, with the caveat that the elders must be unanimous in their decision.

Chosen Generation had dropped the asking price to $229,000, so Friend of Sinners made an offer of $200,000. Chosen Generation counter-offered $215,000, which elated Quakkelaar. But a ruling elder insisted that God had provided $200,000, so the price of the building must be $200,000. After some deliberation, the elders decided to offer $200,000 again. To their surprise, Chosen Generation accepted the offer. In December 2023, Friend of Sinners Church closed on the building and began renovations. 

As they renovated, Friend of Sinners encountered continued generosity from the community. A volunteer who offered to repair the stained-glass windows initially asked only that the church would reimburse him for materials but, after the work was done, refused to charge the church at all. The HVAC repairman and electrician who worked for the church similarly refused to charge the church. 

February 10, 2024, marked Friend of Sinners’ first service in the new building. The church’s property includes a parsonage that Friend of Sinners will repair and use for clothing drives, food pantries, and other mercy ministry projects. 

 “We are implementing projects here that we never could have any other place,” Quakkelaar said. 

Friend of Sinners has also instituted a new door-to-door evangelism project in their neighborhood called Houses of Peace. Quakkelaar has found that most, if not all, of those whom the church has spoken to in its door-to-door work express gratitude for the church and its work. 

“They had been abandoned. It seemed that no one was unifying them as a community,” Quakkelaar said. Now Friend of Sinners can bring residents together.

Friend of Sinners has always hosted a free Sunday morning breakfast for the community, but the church’s new building has streamlined this process. Quakkelaar recounted that people from the neighborhood often come to the church’s breakfast, take a few plates, and leave immediately. But after two to three months, a breakfast regular will often stay for the whole service. 

“We have a number of people who were just coming for the food who have stayed and professed Christ,” Quakkelaar said.

While the church building has blessed Friend of Sinners church with many opportunities, “it’s also increased our need to pray,” Quakkelaar said. The church was vandalized recently, causing about $26,000 in damage. Two Friend of Sinners congregants have been shot. 

Despite the danger of the area, however, Friend of Sinners church has seen no drop in attendance since the move, Quakkelaar said. After they saw the needs of the neighborhood, those who had threatened to leave the church due to the danger of the new neighborhood decided to stay. 

Visitors from the neighborhood often experience awe when they come to Friend of Sinners. 

“They see the chandelier lamps, they see the stained glass window, and they see the pulpit. It just inspires worship much more than the rusted cross beams of a potato chip factory,” Quakkelaar said. He firmly believes that Friend of Sinners’ new building “allows us to communicate to this neighborhood the majesty and generosity of God – and that’s the gospel. This church is the representation of the gospel.”

Sarah Reardon is a contributing writer for byFaith.