Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Where is our building?

Just the other night it happened again: I arranged to meet with a few friends in order to discuss a play we're preparing. We chose our church basement which is unused most Sunday evenings. This seemed like one way to make these friends at least aware of our congregation's existence.

Similar to back in December, rehearsing another play, most of my friends arrived telling me they had trouble finding the building. Some drove by; others ended up at another nearby church building. "You're church is so unassuming." one said.

When we first built our meeting place in the middle of an empty muskeg swamp, perhaps we imagined the neighbourhood growing up in a different way. In any case, it is easy to miss our building especially if you are coming at it from the north, and especially at night.

Here's a map:

http://my.tbaytel.net/northwood/map.html

In any case, I'm glad to say that our congregation had a series of meetings last fall in which we listed c. 20 good ideas (mostly tangible projects) and together ranked them, culminating in the decision Nov. 23rd to have better signage (including a sign on Edward St.) as the top priority of those ideas.

The 2nd project is to advertise better (including or especially on the Internet).

The 3rd project is to replace the pews with movable chairs. This is for at least two purposes:

1) To provide flexibility for use by families and other groups, as well as for our own events, such as dinners and coffeehouses, which currently meet in the small basement Fellowship Room.

2) To provide flexibility for worship services to enable us to see each other better and not have way more seating than we need at times. Currently, speaking to one another in Family Time in the pews is a bit of a challenge and group prayer times would be very difficult.

However, the top priority of any church remains to glorify God by knowing Him and doing His will. This can't be done without prayer alone and together. Please join with us in asking God to provide what is needed in order to do this.

In practical terms in regards to the congregation's top three projects this means that God will need to direct us with ideas for signage and advertising and helping us locate a new home for the pews, and then locate the best source for chairs.

Provision of finances is an issue for each of these as well.

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