Real Life Church is moving to a new permanent location on South Grand Avenue in Pullman. 

Since the start of the church in Pullman over a decade ago, services have been held in temporary locations such as the Schweitzer Engineering Laboratory Event Center, WSU’s Daggy Hall and Colfax Methodist Church, said Lead Pastor Thad DeBuhr.

Leaders of the church had been looking for the right place for about five years before deciding on this particular property, DeBuhr said. 

The biggest appeal of the new property is the location and visibility to the community, he said. 

“The dream is that the building becomes a tool to help us connect with people in the community to reach and serve,” DeBuhr said.

Youth Pastor Corban Lambert said he is most excited to have a place Real Life Church belongs to.

“It’s gonna be nice just to have a home, have everything set up in a place that we can call ours,” he said.

There are a group of volunteers who set up for services every Sunday. With the new location, they will not have to take extra time before and after church to organize and clean up, he said. 

Lambert said members are excited about the move. There were many loud cheers from members when the move was announced. 

DeBuhr said he wants the church to be more than just a “weekend destination” for members. 

“There’ll be things like clothing exchanges or a fitness class in the evenings and all kinds of stuff so that the location is an all-week location,” he said. 

The church is eager to be able to participate in more community outreach, DeBuhr said. 

“We’re super excited to be able to offer a lot more support for college students and college ministry,” he said.

DeBuhr said the church is working to build a more robust counseling team and will be hosting outreach events and activities. There are also plans to have a coffee shop inside the church where DeBuhr hopes to host study events for students. 

“We’re dreaming of doing things where we do late night, open ’til two in the morning, type of deals on the weekends,” he said, “or even dead week we’ll [be open] 24 /7 for a couple of days if anybody needs to come in and get ramped up on caffeine, plug in for the WiFi, all that stuff.”

Just barely a week into construction at the new location, DeBuhr said he hopes to have everything running for a grand opening by September.