Ministry Center
Please email your questions or comments to MinistryCenter@SwansboroUMC.org.
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| Upper Level Rendering (Nov. '09) | Lower Level Rendering (Nov. '09) |
April 2010 Update
Swansboro United Methodist Church is blessed to have hard working laity willing to use their time and talents in many ways to support the numerous ministries, mission opportunities, music programs and educational needs of our faith community. Just ask Lois Craig, our chair of the Council on Ministries, and Mel Guss, chair of Administrative Board, or take a quick look at our church calendar on the website to see all the committee meetings and events in any given month.
At our March Building Committee meeting we voted unanimously to “Take the Next Step,” and we invite you to take that step with us. Recognizing that our most important role as your Building Committee is to listen to your needs and help proclaim them with you and for you to the congregation as part of our future growth, we wish to hear from you first hand. When we began our work as a Building Committee we were grateful for the written reports provided by each chairperson on the Council on Ministries. Working with the Council on Ministries again, we look forward to joint meetings with the various church committees, fellowship groups or executive councils so that we may have Listening Sessions with each work area of the church. By “Taking the Next Step” together with all our committees we will learn by specifically asking the questions: “Where did the current building plan fail to meet the needs of your committee’s ministry?” “Where if any, did the current building plan achieve the needs of your ministry?” Generally speaking, share with us your opinion of the current building plan.
We also need to hear from the rest of our church family who may not be currently serving on a committee or is not a member of one of our fellowship groups such as United Methodist Women or United Methodist Men. If you have a particular passion for Missions, attend the Mission Committee Listening Session. Is your zeal for Christian education for our childcare and Sunday school, then attend the Education and Nurture meeting. All of these joint meetings will be well publicized and we hope well attended. From these joint meetings and Listening Sessions we will be gathering data to take to heart the best ideas from our congregation to improve the existing renderings and plans which may be viewed on our church website at Ministry Center Renderings & Plans. We’ll be listening. Together, in unity we will “Take the Next Step.”
| | John McLean (252) 393-8321 jpmcleanpe@coastalemail.com | Julia Batten Wax (252) 354-2774 |
March 2010 Update
(from the March Newsletter)
Refreshed from a winter break during the season of Advent, your Building Committee is back at work crafting the latest modifications for our Ministry Center. During the last several weeks we have been avidly listening to your comments, your words of appreciation and most of all, to your concerns after the renderings and plans were presented and voted upon at the Church Conference at the end of November. You may recall that the proposal lost by just seven votes.
Just like when computer software developers come out with a new and improved version of their software, we’ve dubbed this process of modifying the building plans, Ministry Center 2.0. At our February meeting the Building Committee reached complete consensus that our next task will be to take the very best design elements of the original plan but marry them to the necessary modifications that we have learned while listening to the congregation. Charlie Johnson has shared a set of alternate drawings he drafted and those are in the hands of the architect and the contractor with whom we have been working.
We thank him for his work on those drawings and the fresh perspective it brings to our work.
As we make this fresh start, in some important and fairly significant spiritual ways we invite you to help us define the soul of Swansboro United Methodist Church. Are we a church satisfied with just who we are now or are we a church that wishes to reach out to the unchurched and invite them to worship and become disciples of Jesus? It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, “The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” Are we satisfied with the status quo of our childcare center and preschool and elementary Sunday school classrooms or are we willing to include them in our plans for new space in the Ministry Center? We have shown our willingness to minister to strangers in missions in other countries and out of state, are we ready to discover new ways to reach out to our hungry and homeless neighbors in Onslow and Carteret County? These
are some of the deep and challenging questions your Building Committee has been pondering for the past few years.
Going forward, it is most important for all members of the committee that this be a project that builds unity in our church, not dissent. We ask that all members of the congregation seek their information from the primary source, the Building
Committee and not from hearsay and well intentioned but misinformed secondary sources. This is a transparent process and we will continue to make it thus. It has been disheartening to hear so many half truths from our fellow church members. Please continue to prayerfully consider what God is asking us to do as His church. We know that the Ministry Center will create new disciples, educate our little ones, allow four generations of our church family to worship and fellowship together and most importantly, will enable us to tackle bold, new yet enduring missions in local ministries for the least, the lost and the hungry right here in our backyard.
As a church we all decided three years ago we were ready for a new building program. At that time you nominated our committee and as their co-chairs we can humbly say that you chose very well – the Building Committee is absolutely the best group of folks with whom we have ever been privileged to work. They are wonderful, insightful, studious, caring, informative and intelligent folks who attend regularly. The untold secret of their gifts is the diversified fields represented and the expertise they bring. One cannot say enough about their dedication. You have tasked us to design an attractive, functional
and cost efficient space, and we will persevere until we have done so in a way that pleases the majority of our church members.
We are listening. Speak to a Building Committee member or call or e-mail the co-chairs this week about what’s on your mind. If the proposed $5 million budget was too ambitious tell us and we can design a down-sized Ministry Center and bring it in on budget for $4 million, $3 million or even less (incidentally, we have confirmed that the Cape Carteret Baptist Church new building came in at $4.2 million, not the $3 million rumor that we heard several times). We really would like congregational guidance for a "firm cost" which the congregation feels confident about. An important point to consider when discussing
these proposed budgets is the difference between a turn-key job and building cost only. All along, the proposal we made to the congregation in November was for a completely turn-key project: all furnishings, site work, landscaping, driveways, parking lots, and architect and contractor fees included. Others who thought a re-designed plan might be cheaper may have been only talking of hard building costs based on $120 to $140 a square foot. We certainly don’t want to move into a new building and
have no money left for tables, chairs or desks.
Ministry Center 2.0…we have faith and hope that it will truly represent what our congregation hears God calling us to build, not just for ourselves, but for those others He wishes us to “bring home” to Swansboro United Methodist Church.
Your Building Committee Co-Chairs look forward to hearing from you soon. We’re listening.
| | John McLean (252) 393-8321 jpmcleanpe@coastalemail.com | Julia Batten Wax (252) 354-2774 |
Church Conference: November 24, 2009
Psalm 133:1 How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!
When it was time to vote the congregation came back with a decision that was almost a draw, 101 no, 94 yes. Seven votes, the number often used in Biblical allegory to denote perfection.
Perfect consensus will be the goal of the Building Committee in the coming weeks and months. For even if the vote had been reversed, seven votes denotes that we need to work just a bit longer on finding and confirming those areas of unity. Seven votes is not a mandate for or against the preliminary plans. A Church Conference we feel is not a basketball game to be decided by one point or a few votes. Had the yes votes been in the majority by seven, we would be proceeding no differently but would step back, listen faithfully, adjust the plans accordingly and then come back before the congregation again in a few months for another Church Conference where we will all get the chance to vote again.
For consensus, compromise and unity to be achieved our church family will have to work on bringing to the task not just open hearts and open minds but open ears! Methodists have been conferencing for almost 300 years. We must listen with ears to hear.
As your Building Committee we did listen Sunday night and will continue to listen to our church family until we find the appropriate ways to compromise on budget, design and how to utilize shared spaces such as the kitchen. Pray earnestly that others will agree to compromise also because we cannot please one ministry of our church at the expense or hardship of another.
The unified message we did hear though is that our church does want a Ministry Center, we all support the educational mission of this church to create young and old disciples, and that we may need to look at a less ambitious plan and budget.
Seven votes. The journey towards the vision of a Ministry Center for our church continues.
Julia Batten Wax and John McLean, Co-Chairs