Dear Grace Fellowship Family:

As most of you know, we are in preparations for breaking ground on a new building. We are hopeful to break ground sometime this Spring. As we approach that time, we want to continue to give regular updates. As plans are beginning to come together, we will try to post updates at least bi-weekly. In addition, we encourage you to come and pray each week prior to the service at 8:30 in room 11. You can also review the plans in room 10 immediately after Connections this Sunday.

Here is this week’s update from the Building and Land Team:

We have been interviewing specialists in Audio, Visual, and Lighting design and installation. These are specialists who design the auditorium so that the music and sound is natural and pleasant without echos, screeching and booming. This includes the type of equipment, placement, direction, as well as wall and ceiling treatments. They also ensure that the projection equipment and screens and the theater lighting are right for everyone in the audience, as well as the people on stage. We hope to select a vendor very soon to work with our building architects.

There have been meetings this week with county Civil Engineers. The county wants us to put in a detention pond in order to limit water runoff to adjacent properties. This is a fairly costly requirement (we don’t have estimates yet). Please pray that we will be able to work this requirement out quickly in a way that is acceptable to the county and helpful and affordable to the church.

Because of this requirement, the architects and engineers are working on adjustments to parking and the overall site plan. We are hopeful to have these updated plans within 2 weeks.Our next milestone is to complete the Design Development by the end of February, ready to turn over in the first week of March to potential General Contractors for developing proposed cost and timelines.
About our Build the Church Project:

We currently have the use of less than 15,000 square feet in the main building for our worship service, Bible classes and child care, plus we have two rooms in two nearby buildings for 5th Grade, Adult Connections and our Administrative office. In comparison, our planned facility will provide nearly 45 thousand square feet of space in the current plans. It will include an auditorium that seats approx. 550 initially, with a balcony that can add about 250 more when built out. But our goal has never been just “build a building”. We want to see God, by His grace, build His church here at Grace Fellowship.

We are building a new facility in order to meet our stated mission: To spread the fame of God. Our building project is not about a nicer building. It is to provide a safe, comfortable environment that will allow us to attract and reach the lost in our community, teach and build our members in the power of the Word and the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and to spread the fame of God in our community and through missions outside our local community for His glory. (Matt. 28:19)

As we continue in this process, we are always open to your input, questions, ideas, or suggestions.

As we develop the budget based on contractor’s estimates, we will know exactly how much money is needed to move forward. In the meantime, several of you have asked about giving to the Build the Church campaign. If you want to give a gift towards the new building, please mark your checks “Build the Church”. If you want to donate stock, please email or call us and we will give you the instructions for donating stock.

Please continue to pray that our gracious God guides us through this process and that we are faithful to do His will and depend on Him in this effort for His glory.

As always, please feel free to contact us or to ask any questions that you may have. We’ll see you Sunday!