New Office

For nearly two years I haven't had an office in which to set up my books. The reason for this is that Central was selling the building in which my previous office was housed. I liked the other building. In fact, I pushed to try an sell the "real" church building and keep the office building because it's a more flexible space (it would actually be cheaper to rent a worship space each week given current heating and repair costs). No one liked my idea and so we put the office/sunday school/youth group building up for sale.

The loss of the other building's space meant that Central was going to have to renovate certain areas of the church building in order to continue ministry. The first presumption among several members of the congregation was that the Church Office and Pastor's Study get top priority and every other space needed to wait until we got the money from the building sale. Other voices (including mine) said that was a bad idea because our youth group has the potential to really impact our town and if the youth were taking over the space for the nursery we'd need a space for that as well. So those two projects got top billing, and the Church Office was moved but not renovated (that's next).

It was the right decision to make, and now we have a decent youth area, and a wonderful nursery for all these babies that have shown up all of the sudden. The problem was, my books were sitting in boxes and I had no where to pop-out and do some quick reading - which got on my wife's nerves after a year or so (especially during the summer when the kids were wondering why I wasn't playing with them all day). Well, after some great work by the trustees of Central Baptist, and nearly 2 years of waiting, I have an office/study again! My books are grateful, and the space is beautiful (perfect for my studying as well as holding Sunday School Classes, Bible Studies, or Small Groups). It makes me happy.


While I regret losing the other building, since we've not been worrying about it I've found that the Church was feeling a lot more "free" to do ministry and nearly every space that I wanted to see renovated from the first moment I walked through Central's doors has been renovated. How cool is that?

Here's the spaces that have been renewed for ministry so far:

• An old basement "primary" room that was used to store the kitchen sink has been emptied, had a new wall put in, painted, carpeted, had a window repaired, hot water pipes boxed-out, and new lights put in. it's our new nursery - and it rocks.
• A former Sunday School room behind the previous nursery (now the youth room) has been cleared out, painted, cleaned, and set up as a Sunday School and Youth discussion room.
• The "Sunday School Auditorium" over-look room has had it's 70's orange-shag carpet ripped out (along with the matching curtains), the large fold-up partitions which opened the room to the auditorium have been boxed out and had two windows put in their place, it's been painted, given new wall-to-wall carpet, and been populated some furniture and book cases. Yup, this is now my office.
• The original pastor's study, which is behind the sanctuary and has direct access to the street but no windows, was being used as another "catch all" storage closet. It's been emptied, the decorations that were in them have been organized and moved, and it's being painted for the purpose of being a 24x7 prayer room. I'm really looking forward to this.

This building has such wonderful spaces, and now we're figuring out how to use them in the ministry of the Gospel. This is a good thing.

Tags: Church, Office