3. What will the money be used for?
$1,500,000 for restoring the Temple Events Center.
$500,000 for cutting our TEC acquisition costs in half.
$250,000 for seed money to address our facility challenge in order to reach out to more people in Wash Park & surrounding neighborhoods.
$250,000 or 10% of everything we raise for local and global poverty.
4. Questions about the Temple Events Center (TEC)
How will restoring the TEC help us achieve our vision?
We have grown by 40% since purchasing the TEC. The extra seating capacity has allowed us reach out to people who feel far from God as well as the church.
Why not leave the building as it is?
We believe God gave us the TEC and we want to steward it well. It is not our building. The TEC belongs to God and we were given it to serve the city. We want to make it a place that reflects God’s beauty and his desire to take care of his creation. We want it to be a clean, safe, comfortable, inviting place for people to bring their friends. We want it to be highly functional for our ministry partner. And we want it to be attractive for concerts, weddings and events celebrating the arts.
What are we restoring?
We are restoring the audio-visual, heating, electrical, and plumbing systems as well as the seating, flooring, bathrooms, masonry, drainage and roofing.
What have we done so far?
We have re-landscaped and restored the downstairs rooms for our children’s ministry and repaired the trusses in the sanctuary. We have invested $50,000 of the money raised so far and have increased our appraisal value by $900,000. We have acquired multiple bids on all the projects we will need to do over the next three years to fully restore the TEC allowing us to put together a master plan for restoring the building.
How will the rest of the money we have raised from our previous campaign be used?
As soon as we finish getting the data we need on various restorations we will begin the work we need to do following the sequence of priorities set by our building team.
5. Questions about Wash Park
What is the problem with our current facility?
Our worship services at Wash Park are over 80% full making it hard to grow. Studies on church growth indicate that when churches reach 80% capacity they will usually stop growing. To see our city reflect God’s redemption requires more people being restored to God and growing in their relationship with Him. Our worship services are one of our primary strategies for helping people find restoration and growth towards becoming passionate, devoted followers of Jesus. We believe additional parking, seats, and space for children and youth would allow us to more effectively include new people into our community and invite them to become passionate, devoted followers of Jesus and join us in our vision.
Where might we move?
We don’t know. We have a team investigating various options. We are exploring all options including: schools, churches, and retail space or even another site.
What will the $250,000 we are raising do for us?
Just like shopping for a house, often the process involves months of looking until you finally find something. Most families save up a down payment so they are prepared to move once they find the right home. We too, want to be prepared. While we don’t necessarily plan to purchase a building, we want to be prepared for the expenses involved with relocating. We want to be prepared with seed money to respond to a solution once we find one.
What is our long term plan for our Wash Park congregation?
It is our plan to remain faithful to reaching out and living missionally within the Wash Park neighborhood. This involves growth in depth and breadth for our faith community. Our commitment is to our neighborhood and our neighbors and we will continually seek to find facilities that support our mission and vision.
8. Where are we with our ongoing ministry budget?
Our budget this year is $1,300,000. Our ministry is growing faster than our budget. For us to be able to develop the worship services, small groups, children/youth ministries, ministry partnerships, service projects, and seminars/retreats that we need to see people optimize their spiritual growth we will need $1,500,000 to cover staff and ministry costs.
It will be critical to the success of our ministry this year that we increase our giving to our ministry budget while we are raising money for capital needs and poverty.
