New Worship Space

 Life has been pretty crazy the last few months with adjusting to having a baby at home again. Alongside that big change, there has been another big event taking place in the life of our church plant - we found and began renting our own space! It was an incredible provision from God, truly miraculous, and we are so incredibly thankful. Most church plants here can go years, even decades, without having their own worship space, so we were shocked to have this door open for us so soon. This "re-birth" of the church coincided with Penny's birth pretty closely, so we'll always know and remember when God answered this prayer! The rental agreement for the church building was signed the week Penny was born and in early January, we began paying rent and renovating the space.

Nate has been hard at work, along with other leaders and church members (including members of the Macedonian Church we'll be sharing the building with) to renovate the space. It's truly a total overhaul, including the following:

- New floors and trim 

- Turning a small empty room into a women's bathroom

- Adding a urinal and removing a shower from another bathroom (to create a men's room)

- Tearing down and rebuilding a wall

- Closing up a large window

- Adding electric blinds to several large windows on the sun-facing side of the building

- Adding in lots of wiring for lighting and sound, then spackling and painting the walls

It's been an exhausting process but so exciting to watch the space transform! Here is what the space looked like when we first saw it last October:

Main Room (previously a clothing shop and tailor)

Back bedroom (will now be the nursery)

Bathroom (now the men's bathroom)

Second bedroom (now a women's bathroom)

Here are some recent photos to show how the space has been transformed (final photos at the end of the process still to come!):

Nate preaching in the new space for the first time on March 12th

Electric blinds on the windows and fresh walls and floor

Walls being painted

A photo from yesterday of the main room

This will soon be the baby nursery (was a bedroom before)

Men's bathroom with shower removed and new urinal and tile

Once the renovations are complete, we look forward to planning some special events to invite people from the community and to celebrate with others being in the new space. Praise God! We eagerly await what God will do in this building!

Radio Silence

It feels like a really long time since I have sat here, and shared my heart with you all. I have sat down a few times and tried to write something, but never got far enough to post it, but finally that time is here, so here we go!

About 6 months ago our church started the process to move from our now former location to a new worship space. We had known for a while that the previous facility wasn't meeting all of our needs, but space is a difficult issue here, and most churches struggle to have adequate worship space. Often times they need some sort of multi-use building that is a church on Sundays and a pre-school or offices the rest of the week.

After much prayer, searching, and struggle, we landed in our new home. The challenge was this new space was empty commercial real estate with cement walls and pipes coming out of the ceiling. So we started planning and dreaming.

A few months ago, things really started to kick into high gear. The last month or so has been a whirlwind of activity. It has been really fascinating to work at the construction site. I am just handy enough that I can make really great mistakes, but I am no expert craftsman. It has been hard to find a balance between "regular ministry," this special project, and family life. We knew that it would be temporary, but certain things have fallen by the wayside (i.e. this blog).

At the moment, I (Nate) feel like I can come back up for air and reconnect with life again.

We are very excited for what God will do through this new space and in the new neighborhood. There continue to be challenges and we still have many kinks and new systems to work out. We know that God has great plans for this church and we are praying that he will walk with them through this new stage of impact.

Here are some photos including me using power tools! Click the images to see them full screen. Thanks so much for your prayers and support!