Sep 30 2009
A Boydseye View – Why are we talking about the building now?
Earlier this week, the Facility Improvement Team met with architects from Strang, Inc. to review the feedback from the congregation to our building proposals. A revised and slightly reorganized set of options will be presented on Sunday, October 18th after worship. We hope as many as possible can join us for that session in the worship hall after worship.
Why are we talking about the building now anyway? Almost three years ago, we set forth to dream together what ministry here at Orchard Ridge would look like in the ‘next generation’ of our church’s life. Rooted in our wonderful history, we asked members to dream and offer input on directions and ministries we felt God was calling us to as we moved past our 50th year. Over time, with a host of dedicated committees and explorer teams, we fine-tuned and prioritized those hopes and dreams into the Next Generation Initiative report that was presented to the congregation last January. Using that report, we asked the Facility Improvement Team to consider the building needs based on our future sense of call into the future.
In every key area that we feel a sense of God’s direction – our ministry with children and youth, our experience and enjoyment of music and the arts, our hope for deepened spirituality and our desire to become more sustainable and connected to the earth within our faith community – we found it necessary to enhance our current building to achieve the future programmatic ministry and/or growth that we want as a congregation. This building was intentionally and lovingly designed and built over the last 50 years. It has been cared for mostly by a group of dedicated and devoted volunteers. As our ministry and congregation has evolved, so have our needs. Take the Friendship Hall. Built when the building was first erected around 1960, it has served as a multi-purpose room – at time hosting dances, volleyball games, basketball, fencing dinners, sales and Sunday morning conversation time. It is space with limited functionality: acoustically challenging, uninviting, out dated in appearance and unusable for many functions. It sits in the heart of our building, and is a large space that is largely underused. It is time for us to consider how we use it and what it communicates to guests and newcomers, as well as to ourselves.
All three of our building proposals include a major reworking of the lounge and Friendship Hall to improve traffic flow after worship, to create a warm and welcoming place for coffee, conversation, friendship building. They consider removing walls, adding doors and natural light, improving the surfaces of the room, upgrading the lighting for better efficiency and adding up to date AV capabilities. The hope is that such a room would communicate hospitality and support the building of community in ways that it simply does not do currently. While many of us experience community in that room, we do so in spite of that room, not because of it. Guests and new members, however, tell us regularly that the room is very unappealing and not welcoming. It is working against the very values we profess as a church.
To say we need a different kind of Friendship Hall today than we did 50 years ago is a natural evolution in the life of any church. The building proposals seek to consider these same questions for the education wing, our office suite, our worship hall, our classrooms and bathrooms. In the process, we have the opportunity to vastly improve our energy efficiency and our connection to the natural world with new mechanicals and enhanced windows and daylight capturing features.
This opportunity to make a bold and important statement about the future of this church doesn’t come easily or very often. Many of you have given a good deal of time and energy to this process and these discussions. I encourage to look at and study these ideas and to consider what they might mean for our future ministry of progressive and openhearted ministry here. I urge you to consider how a more sustainable and earth connected campus can inspire us as energy consumers. I hope we will be mindful of the importance our renewed focus and sense of ministry in this changing and challenged neighborhood. I hope you will imagine with me and together what ministry for today and tomorrow’s children can mean in a world desperately seeking compassion and grace.
I hope you can join us for the presentation on the 18th at 11:15. Childcare will be provided.

