With God's Hope~Our Journey Continues...

“With Praise and Thanksgiving” is the theme of our responses to the Ministry of our church for the year 2007! You will be delighted with the letter you’ll receive from Randy McNitt, our Mission Resource Chairperson, (Stewardship). The letter gives each of us an opportunity to say “YES, I want to share back with God what He has so graciously shared with me.” You will be delighted with Randy’s special “classifieds” which will invite us to respond to the ministry tasks that need our support today. Yes, it is November and it is time to renew our ministry commitments so that 2007 will be filled “With Praise and Thanksgiving” to the General Ministry of Atonement. What a challenge God is calling us to respond to in this coming year!

Many have asked, "When will the new sanctuary be ready?” I don’t know! We pray by February 1. If it is earlier, that would be great, but there are so many things yet to be finished. Roy and his 15-20 brick layers are nearly finished laying all of the brick work. The columbarium will be bricked soon.

The four special beautifully bricked pillars on the north edge of the parking lot are for the dumpster or garbage. Yes, it is what the city required us to do.

Notice the special tie-in of blond brick on the walls of the old educational building and the sharp blond ribbon of bricks that wraps the entire sanctuary and educational building together. Have you noticed that the roof is almost on?

Kurt has a crew of 5-15 people working feverishly to get us covered before winter. The snow slows them down, but Kurt and his framing crew are very careful and promise to do a beautiful job. The framers are putting up the dry wall for the narthex, family restrooms and the special room by the kitchen. Please note the pictures that Mike Skaff will have on monitors in the narthex.

As Ron Lorenz, our Building Ministry Team chairperson, told us at the Congregational Meeting in September, Tony Miller and John Quade, contractor and superintendent, meet with us every two weeks to keep us posted on progress. Ron and I submit the financial draws to Mission Investment Funds in Chicago so that Mike Nicholson, our construction treasurer, can write the check to pay the bills received from the contractor. Those bills are carefully studied and approved by Architect Bob Saas before Ron Lorenz and I see them. We are nearing the one million dollar mark with our loan draw. We pay interest monthly on the amount borrowed and won’t begin making mortgage payments until we are ready to move into our new sanctuary.

Thanks to everyone’s patience with the construction. Meeting space, parking, and the cold have made it a challenge to keep focused on the ministry together. Flexibility is the key to having meetings at church because we never know what will be changed. We have no privacy for meetings but that will change soon.

Thanks for continuing to share your special gifts that began with the capitol campaign two years ago this Thanksgiving. We are ahead of schedule. One year remains on the campaign. We are beginning to plan for the next phase where René Myers of Kairos will help us manage our new challenges of mission and new mortgage payments. René has helped us from the beginning and we will continue to work with her to guide us in this journey that God is calling us to share. So we are Living In God’s Love and Reaching Out with Hope! Pray that our journey will continue “With Praise and Thanksgiving” as we celebrate Thanksgiving!