In April, the four ECC Pastors did a walkthrough of our Life Center building to evaluate what could be done to both re-organize and enhance each room and storage space in the building. At the heart of the meeting was a desire to see the spaces renewed and ready for future ideas within each ECC ministry that uses the building throughout the year. We looked at not only the main rooms but also at the storage closets and the ways in which each were organized and accessible for use. And as ideas began to form, we consulted with our ministry leaders for groups like Women’s Ministry, MOPS, Kids Out Loud, Youth Group and our Bauer/Miller ministry partners. In the end, Pastor Kristin and Pastor Chuck were tasked with organizing our ideas and making plans for a project that would renew the Life Center for years to come.
We are excited to announce that the project proposal was presented to ECC’s leadership council last week and the beginning phases of this project have been approved to begin immediately! While this is a large project with many pieces still being planned and formed, we wanted to go ahead and share with you these first phases of this project and show you how we hope everyone at church will consider partnering with us and giving your time to make this project happen.
The first phase of the Renewal project is all about re-organizing our storage spaces to best serve the ministries that use them. The first room is the Kids Out Loud supply room, which is accessible from a door in the southwest lower stairwell next to the garage. This room is currently used to house a variety of Children’s Ministry supplies, but it also shares the space with food and supplies for the Bauer food ministry. In the renewal project, all the Bauer food will be moved to a new location and this room will be reorganized to better serve the weekly needs of our Kids Out Loud program.
The Bauer food supplies will then be moved to one of the small downstairs classrooms, next to the kitchen. This room is currently our video production room. Shelves will be brought in to make this room a great storage space to safely house our Bauer food pantry, and all the video production supplies will be relocated. The production room will find a new home in the main church building. Room 9, which hasn’t been used for a number of years, will be cleared out and re-designed to be a better production studio room that will enhance our ability to provide well-produced media for our church.
We are also cleaning out and rearranging a few of the closest spaces that have been part of shared storage over the years. The closet behind the Life Center Auditorium currently holds materials for 3 different ministries. Storage for MOPS will move to another closet space closer to the café area, and Women’s Ministry supplies will move to a small room on the west side of the gym. Youth Ministry storage will remain in the Life Center Auditorium closet and be expanded. The remaining closet space will be used to store what it was designed to store: the various music and A/V supplies that currently sit in a corner of the Life Center Auditorium, covered by a blue accordion wall.
Outside of storage and production spaces, we also have made significant plans to re-design and re-purpose the two upstairs rooms that were formerly the Middle School and High School Sunday School rooms. These rooms, fondly known as the Orange and Blue rooms because of their bold paint colors, have not been used for Sunday classes since the winter of 2020, and have primarily remained unused.
As we look at future plans for our middle school, high school, and Life Groups, we will re-design these rooms into usable spaces for the ministries we have now. The High School room (or Blue Room) will be redesigned as the “Play” room, to be used by kids of all ages. It will have active games like ping-pong, air hockey, and carpetball, as well as a space for video games, and a space to sit around the table and play board or card games. It will be a great space for middle school and high school students to hang out, and it will also be a great space to care for Life Group kids as their parents meet in the room down the hall.
The former Middle School room (or Orange Room) is being completely re-designed to be a comfortable “Small Group” room. Whether it’s Life Groups, a ministry planning team, or even a youth group small group meeting, this room will be designed with comfortable seating, a nice table for gathering, and even a drink station with hot and cold beverage options. Between both of these rooms, we hope to create the perfect environments for these various ECC groups to meet and even have childcare any night of the week!
This is just a taste of how we are trying to re-organize and renew the Life Center spaces. For now, we want to invite you to be a part of this project! During the week of July 24-28, we are closing down the Life Center while we have a variety of volunteer times where we hope you might consider coming and lending a hand with this project. From moving supplies to other rooms, to reorganizing shelves, to hauling out furniture, there is much work to be done and we hope you can join us! You can sign up online for a work shift here.
Additionally, after sorting through all the storage areas, we expect to have a LOT of items that we no longer need. Thus, on July 29, from 8am to 1pm, we are having a Life Center “Give-Away” event. All ECC friends are invited to stop by the main gym of the Life Center and look through all these items to take home what you would like! Nothing will be for sale, we just want it all to find a new home (though donations are always welcome). Anything not taken after this event will be sent away, so we hope you’ll come take some of these items and help us clean out and prepare the Life Center for this new season of ministry.
We look forward to sharing further phases of this renewal project in the future. For now, if you have any questions, feel free to contact Pastor Chuck or Pastor Kristin.