Dear Family in Christ,

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Some of us may remember when our church home housed the largest Lutheran Church family in Northeast Ohio!

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On Sunday mornings, we had multiple worship services with each service nearly filling our 398-seat nave. Every week, our Sunday School program filled the education wing with between 400-500 students! Confirmation classes met weekly for two-hour class sessions over the course of two-years with 30-60 confirmands!
 

Looking back, every inch of our church home was used to God's glory in ministry and outreach.

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For many families, after the children move away, the house becomes too big, too old, too hard to clean and maintain and too much to afford.

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We, like those families, are now in a similar situation by beginning the hard-to-face discussion of asking ourselves if we need to downsize or possibly find a way to keep the home we love.

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Considering that the house our church family lives in is vastly in need of restoration and remodel, and is too big for our current needs, it's time we come up with a plan to fix it up. We need to do so in such a way that glorifies God and in a way which we can afford without sacrificing our ability to do ministry and outreach. Or, we must come up with a plan to downsize.

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We have a great property committee led by Neal Hinz. We also have a lot of volunteers who have given much of their time, talent, and money in working to improve the building and its surrounding property. Keep in mind, Neal and his team deal with emergent issues and repairs in and around the church building.
 

In looking at all the things, we could do to return our church home to its former glory and better suit our current needs for worship, fellowship, ministry and outreach.
 

I've recommended to Council that we form a future vision team who will work with Neal and the Property Committee and Council to come up with long-range ideas and plans; calculate the costs of needed improvements; restoration or remodel, and then present the details and costs of those ideas to the congregation to determine whether we fund and then proceed with those ideas and plans or not.

This is a hard conversation for any family. A church family is no different. What I am recommending is a long-term conversation that we begin now that could take us as long as to our 100th Birthday. Or, maybe it could take longer.
 

We're about to take our first steps in a marathon, not a sprint! Ultimately the decisions that will one day be made will be made by the family as a whole with every voice being heard and majority rule.
 

So, let us take those first steps to begin what for some of us will be a very hard conversation which a lot of us would rather ignore. But, people of faith do not ignore issues and ministries that the Holy Spirit calls us to face and do.
 

May we remain a faithful church family by following the guiding of the Holy Spirit, now and always. Amen.

 

Journeying with you in Christ, 

Pastor Jay