Four Years Ago …

Four years ago today major renovation of what has become our Worship Center began. It didn’t take long for the demolition crew to cut through the roof. We’ve been in the Eastgate facility a while now, and I am still amazed at the grace and kindness of God in providing what we have. For those new to the story, these pictures of a hole in the roof represent something of a miracle. Due to building permit issues we thought that we’d be worshipping in a room with a low ceiling and lots of support columns for 5 years before we could build something more extensive. Discouraging, but doable … we were motivated. Then we discovered we had some seismic retrofitting to do … quite discouraging and expensive. Then God provided our team with an insight allowed us to address most of the seismic issues by raising the roof! (It was a bit more complicated but that was the end result). We had to spend a bit more, but it was much (much!) less than we would have spent to complete the original plan and we had great worship space from the start.

Each week as I enter the Worship Center I am reminded of how God can turn disappointing circumstances into wonderful gifts.

The Page

I picked this quote up from another executive pastor blog: “You will never be on the same page unless you have an actual page.” That is something that Jerry and our ministry staff are intentionally working towards … getting our ministry philosophy, strategy and commitments in an agreed upon document that becomes the page we all want to be on. It would certainly be much easier and faster if we were starting from scratch but then where would the challenge be?  

Look for Pastor Jerry to share some of our “page” over the next few weeks.

Yellow. Cards. And. You. Fill. Them. Out. Please!

At just about every worship service at Crossroads we will call attention to a very simple piece of cardstock … the multi-purpose Crossroads communication card, commonly known as the “Yellow Card” … which is inside the weekly copy of Crossroads Today. We ask everyone in attendance to complete a card weekly (actually, you only need to fill in your name if nothing has changed). And we promise, your information is collected for our use only.

Why is this card so helpful to us? Let me count some of the ways:

1. It lets our ministry teams know you were here! And that is important to us on so many levels. With over 2000 people attending CBC we just are not always able to notice who might be sitting in worship. And worship is important to us.
2. It helps us capture address changes and other information. And we seem to have lots of address and information changes!
3. It is a means of requesting information about CBC membership, baptism or various ministry programs.
4. It is a means of communicating to the staff team. We may be in the e-age and we certainly get our share of comments and questions via email but there are a surprising number of people who still like to communicate using a writing implement. And we read every card, passing them on to the most appropriate ministry team.
5. We also encourage you to jot down anything you would like our ministry teams to be praying about. Every request received is actually prayed for by a prayer team each Sunday morning before the services are over! We also distribute the prayer requests to the staff and elders every week.

So … help us serve you … don’t be afraid … complete the yellow card every week.

 

More Parking

As noted in my last post, as we began the master plan work we made some important discoveries quite quickly. We wanted to consider how to maximize use of the facility and determine what we still needed to finish. Since we moved in so quickly and built out much of our building on the fast track, we wanted to talk more about effective and  efficient room use. We needed to be preparing for future growth, future ministry plans, more office and administrative space. However, we quickly discovered that first we had to deal with determining what additional parking, if any, we could, and would add. For example, while we can still accomodate more people on Sunday morning for worship and classes, we have little room to park their cars.

When we moved in 2004 we understood that we would be able to add a few spaces on our current property and that it would most likely incur significant expenses beyond the cost of paving or striping (mostly having to do various mitigations). However, our master plan team found the means of adding up to 200 spaces on our site, and when checking with the City it appeared that we might avoid some of the extra expenses. We decided to pursue this option aggressively - working with the City of Bellevue, our architects and various engineers to solidify the plan - using some of the funds from Project 2007. We have applied for a construction permit and hope to have approval from the city by the middle of summer. We will then have up to three years to actually complete the work, but we can immediately do more effective planning.

We can now develop a realistic master plan to finish what we started, add what will be needed, and determine how much it will cost to do it all. We can also create sensible phases and funding plans. So, when you see the “proposed work” go up please pray that our neighbors will be amenable and that the city will approve our plans without extra work (and cost!). Early estimates are that it would be $1.5 million to add what amounts to approximately 40% more parking. With an outstanding line of credit we are taking no further action other than the permit and getting estimates. But the leadership have asked the Business Administration Task Group to investigate possible funding scenarios for the future, that will pay down the loan balance and allow for parking and other possible masterplan additions and renovations. In the meantime the Elders have created a “Parking Expansion Fund” for those who might want to contribute towards that project.

 

Of Special Projects and Parking Lots

After so many years of seeing God work generously through his people at Crossroads I should not be surprised, but I still marvel at the faithful, consistent, and generous giving of this congregation. And that without a collection in the service! 

Many will be aware that we initiated a low key special giving project in May 2007. We hoped for $250,000 to be used toward some parking and lighting improvements, replacement of one of our four aging rooftop HVAC units, and some miscellaneous   improvements that need to be done around our entries. We also needed some funds to create a new facilities master plan.  Anything above that would go towards paying down our line of credit that remains after our move into the Eastgate facility.  

So, what happened?

I’ll leave the detailed accounting to the Business Administrator, but this short-term special giving project will wrap up on May 1 and we have received just under $250,000 through the end of March.

And, what got done?

We actually added HVAC capacity made some repairs to one of the rooftop units. The Fireside Room is now much more comfortable and controlled, as is the foyer and the youth room. The damaged lighting in the parking lot was repaired, and the most significant trouble spots in the parking lot were patched and repaired. We also began the process of designing new covered entries, but decided to hold off on constructing  them when we dug into the initial master plan work … a greater opportunity presented itself and we chose to change the scope of our work to focus on that. More on the that in my next post.

Oh yeah, as for our line of credit, between extremely generous contributions to the general fund, and some under-spending in our staffing and programs, we were able to make a significant “payment” on the line of credit too.

An Often Asked Question

I mentioned that we have seen our average attendance grow by 400 over the past few years. Many are already believers who have been sigificantly committed to a previous church. They have many questions about our fellowship, but one comes to the forefront fairly quickly - some form of “how do I give to this church?” or “why don’t you take an offering in worship services?” Our practice for 22 years has been to allow members and friends of Crossroads to discretely drop their contributions to the work of the church into collection boxes at the back of the worship center (or, deliver them to the church office during the week).This choice (which pre-dates my joining the staff) wasn’t made because we considered collections in worship to be wrong or unbiblical and in looking back at the leadership records of that time we find that there were three understandings that lay behind the decision:

• Taking up a collection in the middle of worship was seen as a distraction, often breaking the flow & emphasis of worship.
• People outside the church in the early 1980’s seemed to be very put off by churches and ministries that were “always talking about money.” It was one of the primary spoken excuses the un-churched gave for avoiding church. The same feelings continue to be held by the un-churched today.
• A conviction that offerings were to be “given”, not “taken”.

There were those who were concerned that the church would run out of funds, lay off staff, or have to cut back on missions when donations shriveled up. (Even today we still have some who suggest that we’d get a much more in financial support from a weekly worship offering). Interestingly, a look at the financial records shows that donations to the church increased by 10-20% weekly after the use of collection boxes was implemented.

An earlier statement of ministry convictions included this statement:

 Our ministry is supported by faith in an omnipotent and sufficient God who provides for His church through the faithful financial gifts of its members and friends.  Because we believe that an offering is to be given rather than taken, offering boxes are located by each doorway for the convenience of those who understand their God-given responsibility.

The manner in which people give to the church may change over the years, but that first sentence will remain true in all times. We do talk about money as appropriate, and always let the congregation know if there are financial concerns, believing that God will move through his people — no cajoling, begging or manipulation required.

I suppose that I should note that we do take up one collection monthly as part of our remembrace at the Lord’s Table. As a tangible response in remembrance of God’s great grace and mercy we give to our Benevolence Fund which is used to minister to those in need (a topic for a future post).