Due to the construction timeline issues we are facing, we are suspending midweek worship until January 2011, effective immediately. Student worship and AWANA will continue.
We were informed this week that at the current rate of construction, the new worship center will now not be ready to go until Sunday, Dec. 12. That is simply not an option. Typically, after the 2nd Sunday of December, attendance drops off dramatically until January. The grand opening of our new worship center is a unique opportunity to draw people to Christ that we must capture. We simply can’t afford to have the grand opening on Dec 12 and then the following three Sundays have so many NEHBCers gone while the community is visiting. We must get in at least two full Sundays with our grand opening which means we must open by Dec. 5.
We met with the construction company and they can have it ready Dec 5 if we give them back a full day on Wednesdays and Saturday mornings. Right now, the construction company shuts down work after lunch on Wednesdays and they spend the rest of the day cleaning up the worship center and lobby for us to have worship Wednesday night; thus, they lose at least a half day of work time every Wednesday.
Originally, we were going to be out of our building for 8-10 weeks during this last part of the construction which would have meant shutting down Wed pm all together for three months and spending $10k/month to rent a temporary facility for Sunday mornings. We opted to share the space with the construction company in order to save the money and continue midweek worship, AWANA, student worship, ECC, etc. So, the midweek worship services we have been able to enjoy thus far this fall are an unexpected blessing to begin with.
Remember, we typically close down midweek worship after Thanksgiving holidays anyway b/c attendance completely drops off for the holiday season. So, closing down midweek worship now is only cancelling 7 services.
The Sabbath Day worship of our church family is priority one and especially the need to capture the grand opening of the new worship center which makes this a worthwhile exchange.
Midweek worship will resume on Wednesday, January 12, 2011.
This also means the worship center set up for Sunday is going to have to move to Saturday afternoon instead of the morning.
I’ll be explaining this to the congregation this coming Sunday and it will go into effect starting next week.
Posts
