Case Statement: What We Are Doing, and Why
Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church has been blessed by God with steady growth in attendance, participation, and membership since 2000. We have worked to meet the increasing opportunities and needs for worship, evangelism, Christian education, fellowship, and mission, by adding professional staff, increasing our parking space, adding a second worship service on Sunday morning, and over-scheduling and squeezing every square inch out of our existing space. Meanwhile…
- We have a full-time professional (who does two entirely different jobs, music and Christian Education) who has no office.
- Two rooms—our library and our fellowship hall—are in near constant use, meaning there is no way to satisfactorily leave either of those rooms prepared for the next use on the list, and there are often disappointed groups who cannot do what they otherwise would be able to do, simply because there is no place.
- We have a choir room that can barely fit a choir, let alone space for instruments, music files, and any space at all for the director to organize—not even so much as a desk.
- Our nursery is slightly bigger than a phone booth, while our church continues to receive members and regular visitors with infants and toddlers.
- We have tremendously inadequate classroom space, closet space, and storage.
- We have no assigned room for youth.
And so, having worked carefully to ascertain our needs as specifically as possible, we are beginning a process of financing a practical and exciting building expansion. Our new architectural plans offer us the space we need to welcome and incorporate the people God is sending us, and to do the things that we can and should do. not just to increase membership but, more importantly, to increase discipleship for all our members.
Visitors and potential new members to join us in this ministry will not return if they know there is no room. Because we have dealt with the increasing inadequacies of our space for so long, we must face down the danger of allowing inadequate provision of the basic resources of ministry to become accepted or even expected. The good news is: if it’s God’s will, we can do it, together!
God continues to bless us with strong lay leadership, active members, and lots of new opportunities. Stated flatly, we need more space to do what God is leading us to do. This is our opportunity to take a brave step forward in faith, knowing that God will lead us where we need to go!
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