Better Together | Week 1
PAVING THE WAY TO HOSPITALITY
We Are a Church Without Walls. (But we still have a parking lot!)
Before this year, have you ever spent so much time in a church parking lot? From worship services, to drive-up communion, to a pastor installation and a congregational cookout, we have come to appreciate our parking lot in a whole new way in this pandemic season. It is truly the place where our wide open welcome and hospitality begins. Here are a couple of parking lot stories from the past few months:
At a recent congregational cookout in the parking lot, we shared conversation over brats and hamburgers. We enjoyed conversation, live music, and games for the kids which included bean bag toss and asphalt stacking. What is asphalt stacking? It involves finding chunks of broken pavement and seeing who can make the tallest tower!
At a parking lot worship service in May, a generous member wanted to leave a financial contribution. The offering plate was on a stand for people to share their gifts, but it happened to be a windy day, and any envelopes or cash would have blown away. In a stroke of ingenuity, our members took a chunk of loose pavement and used it as a paperweight in the offering plate… problem solved!
We have been creative problem solvers, making the most of our parking lot patina. Yet the potholes and asphalt chunks have become an obstacle to communicating our welcome and hospitality for one another and especially for newcomers to our faith community.
Thanks to your generosity last year we raised the necessary funds to repair the lower parking lot. Unfortunately, the city had other plans. We were recently informed that we need to add curb, sidewalk, and boulevard to the lower lot in order to be up to code. This more than doubled our anticipated expenses, so we were unable to complete this task. We also still need to finish the upper lot as well.
Our stewardship theme this year is Better Together, Paving the Way Forward. Our goal is to increase our Operating Fund by $1,346 per week, or $70,000 per year. We want to repair our parking lot as the gateway to our hospitality, revitalize our Children Youth and Family ministry, and maintain ministry excellence as we live into this exciting new era. Please pray for a generous response to this challenge, and prayerfully consider increasing your gift for the coming year. We are Better Together, and side by side we can sustain Gloria Dei’s vibrant ministry for all of us, and for generations yet to come.