Almost 10 years ago, the current iteration of our church set out to define our modern mission and set a vision for who we wanted to be in today’s context. Out of this effort was born the mission we display on the sign that sits at the corner of Mill road and Pleasant Street today: Here to Serve.
That set in motion a season of discovering what this group could do if we made it a priority to find ways to practically serve and show love to the people, families, schools, businesses around us - and a season of discovering and stepping into our own identity.
One of the things we identified early in that process what the barrier that our own facilities were to pursing this revitalized goal. Our building, part of it 25 years old and yet another almost 100 years old, was not without its challenges. Some challenges were in the prohibitive design, some were in age and disrepair, and further we knew that if growth continued, square footage would be a challenge as well.
We investigated an expansion project at our current site, and spent a year toiling against many roadblocks to that plan. Eventually, we reconciled that in order to move forward, we may have to move away too - even just a little bit. We took a risk and purchased a piece of land on Storey Road East, believing someday we’d call it home.
In the meantime, we set our minds to serving. We opened our doors to a local daycare, displaced by fire and smoke damage. Free of charge and at a cost to their own comfort, our church community gave this group the run of our facility until they were able to return home, just because we’re neighbours. We marched with the community in solidarity as they fought to save their neighbourhood rink. We hosted fundraisers to help with the effort. We spearheaded a campaign to buy new and needed instruments for our local Middle School’s music program. We collected and donated supplies to our schools and hosted fall fairs and lent tables and served in breakfast clubs. We walked through our community and handed out free 9v batteries door-to-door for our neighbour’s smoke detectors. We host a bi-annual neighbourhood yard sale, donating all profits back into our community. All the while opening our doors weekly to host children and their caregivers for a playgroup on Tuesday mornings, elementary aged kids on Wednesday evenings, teenagers on Fridays, men and women on Tuesday evenings, and anyone and everyone on Sundays.
All of this has been exciting to be part of, but one thing is clear: It has been in spite of, not enabled by, our facility. Constant set up and tear down of multi-use spaces. Replacing ceiling tiles and ferrying buckets around the many leaks. Frequent stop-gap renovations and reallocations, not to mention convoluted room assignments and traffic flow. We meet on Sundays in what was once a gym, setting up and tearing down chairs and tech equipment each time, in order to provide use of the old sanctuary space to our large kids ministry. We have staff in stairwells, storage closets and make shift nooks and crannies in lieu of proper office space. We’ve had to restrict and, in some cases, stop many programs for lack of square footage. Many would point out these are great problems for a church to have, and we’d agree. Nonetheless, problems they remain. We are out of useable and functional space every way we can be.
As we plugged and plodded along the “Here to Serve” road, we began to raise money. We secured a firm to help us design and ultimately build a new space. We worked and analyzed and revisited and sharpened pencils and worked some more. We arrived at a design we thought was modest, yet gave us every advantage and opportunity to really take the reins off our mission and let it loose in the community.
What came next was a series of setbacks and peculiarities that not only inflated the budget but presented us with practical concessions and questions. We arrived at a point where we believed proper stewardship of our resources meant hitting pause to reconsider where things had now arrived. We believed and believe that ultimately our resources are best used in the ministry and mission we’ve embraced and not as much in bricks and mortar beyond the extent that they serve the mission.
We engaged another firm to help us consider what it could look like to return to the place we started and contemplate a large-scale renovation of our current site. Long story short, we’ve been very pleased with the proposals and possibilities, including the accompanying budget.
2019 brought about a crossroads; with one road taking us to a new site atop the hill on Storey Road East home to a brand new building designed around our needs and mission, but with it a hefty price tag sure to constrict our mobility for years to come. The other sees us staying put, enduring the inconvenience of a renovation and coming up a little shorter on the perfection of the resulting facility, but staying “home” on Pleasant Street and with much less of a financial burden.
Because our priorities lie in the ability to be generous with ministry and not in infrastructure and our demonstrated skill in enduring less-than-ideal scenarios in favour or mission, we are more and more open to - dare we suggest excited about - the prospect of renovations on Pleasant Street.
We want to be MORE Lewisville than ever.
Click here to view an update from our Steering Committee.
