OK – first the background. We had two big meetings to try and catch our faith family up on some very important news around Calvary. A lot of people came – but a lot of people didn’t. I’ve been trying to share the information in these blog posts. Be sure to read the other two posts to get all the info:
What’s Good at Calvary?
What Is Challenging Us?
As I shared in the last post, the finances in our General Fund have been really strained in 2011. This has been the biggest struggle for us, and has held us back in some ways this past year. One of the reasons for the financial stress (aside from decreased offerings) is that we have not been able to get “The Cairn” project finished. This project has taken far longer than we ever imagined. As a result, we are carrying expenses for that project (Manager’s salary, rent, utilities) with no income at all – something that we did not think would be true.
THE CAIRN:
The Cairn is a new ministry project in downtown Winchester. We are renovating a 150 year old, 3-story building at 17 South Main Street. In this building we be placing a full service coffee house on the 1st floor, and a state of the art Teen Center on the 2nd & 3rd Floors. The Coffee House will be a relational environment, a place where people are invited to gather, mingle, relax, and enjoy good conversation and relationships. It is our intent that the coffee house will provide the type of environment that fosters the development of real community. The Coffee House will serve gourmet “fair trade” coffee from around the world. The mere act of buying a cup of coffee will be doing good, as it will help to provide a fair and liveable wage for a third world farmer and his family. The coffee shop will also serve a light food menu, host live music, and possibly even eventually be the sight of a new place of worship on the weekends. Unlike most small businesses, the Coffee House will open debt free, with a freshly remodeled state of the art space and equipment. Because of this, and the hope that it will be well supported by our faith family, it is our goal that the Coffee House will become self-sustaining as soon as possible. In fact, we HOPE that it will become self-sustaining AND be able to help pay for the functioning of the Teen Center upstairs, AND be able to contribute financially to other ministries and causes locally and around the world. Will it take time to get to this stage? Yes. Definitely. Is it possible? Absolutely.
The Teen Center will occupy the 2nd floor initially, and eventually we hope, the 3rd floor. The Teen
Center will be 3000+ sq. ft of space dedicated to kids. A state of the art sound system, gaming systems, hang out areas, enrichment programs, loving volunteers, rockin’ concerts, and more. The Center will help us reach out to kids who our churches aren’t presently reaching, give them a place to call their own, and set kids on a path to know Jesus.
That’s the plan. But here’s the thing. It turns out that renovating a 3-story 150 year old building and opening two brand new businesses (Coffee House & Teen Center) is NOT an easy thing to do! This project has turned out to be far more difficult and far more costly than we ever imagined.
Why?
A number of reasons. Basically, from a construction perspective, everything that was open for interpretation has gone against us:
- We’ve had to install a Sprinkler System in the ENTIRE building before we could open any part of the building ($85,000).
- We’ve had to build a second set of stairs off of each floor and provide a “fire protected envelope” from the third floor all the way to the outside of the building – which required not only new stairs, but the installation of a new backdoor exit as well.
- Once demolition was underway and we exposed the floor/ceiling joists, we discovered that the
structural support for the 2nd floor was inadequate to support the number of kids in the Teen Cetner that the space would allow. This meant we had to tear out the floor on the first floor, dig down under the building, poor concrete footers, have structural steel hauled in by cranes, and erect that steel inside the 1st Floor Coffee House to support the 2nd Floor Teen Center ($50,000).
- We’ve been required to build 5 brand new handicap accessible bathrooms for the first two floors alone.
- We’ve had to replace the glass in the front windows with shatter proof glass.
- We discovered that the existing elevator shaft and opening was not large enough for a modern elevator. Though we are not required to have the elevator until we open the third floor – we had to go ahead and dig the pit below the building, poor the concrete, and construct the shaft itself on floors 1 & 2 while we are building those out. To do so later, after construction was already completed on these floors would have been catastrophic from an operational perspective. ($60,000)
- As it turns out – when it comes to buying the equipment for a coffee house, whatever number you might guess that the equipment is going to cost, you’re probably going to be too low. Did you know that a commercial espresso machine can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to as much as $100,000?! We’re much closer to the lower number than we are the higher one, but building out this space has come with a staggering learning curve.
- I could go on and on and on…but you get the idea.
The people of Calvary have continued to give faithfully to “GO,” and it is those funds that are finishing out the space. But the cashflow has not kept up with the outgo. We had to pause the project a few months ago.
There have been times over the past few months that finishing the space has seemed far from our reach. At times I have questioned whether or not we heard God clearly.
Our estimate a month ago was that we are still about $550,000 from opening the space. The “GO” funds have been coming in at a pace of about $3,000 per week. Do the math. That’s 183 weeks – that’s over 3 years!! Can that be right? Did God REALLY want us to develop this ministry? And if He did, why wasn’t He supplying the funds that were needed? God and I had some pretty tough conversations where I would just say – “Lord, if you want this to happen, you’re going to have to do something, because I feel like we’ve hit a brick wall. I feel like I’ve done things wrong, or led us down the wrong direction. God – if this is going to get done, you’re going to have to do it.”
And so — He did!
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:
Calvary was recently given a very large grant from a private foundation. The grant is for finishing “The Cairn.” The money will come in over the next few months – and the total will be between $400,000 – $500,000!!!! The continued contributions of our members are important — we still have a lot of work to do and thousands of dollars to raise in order to get the Teen Center open. But we are so close to seeing this become a reality!
CHRISTMAS OFFERING:
We’ve been collecting our Christmas Offering all month. It’s our way of saying “Happy Birthday Jesus.” It’s also a way for us to push back against the materialism of this season in America, and “put our money where our mouths are.” We are supporting two causes with the offering. Part of the money will go to THE CAIRN. With the ongoing weekly contributions and the grant money, we project that the Coffee House on the first floor will open with the next few months and that the Teen Center will be open by summer IF we can raise about $30,000 for THE CAIRN in our Christmas Offering. The other cause is to build a well in Quanamithe, Haiti. This will be a large capacity
commercial well – serving tens of thousands of people. A child dies every 20 seconds in the world due to contaminated water – a problem that experts say could be solved if we spent just $20 Billion a year on Water Projects. For comparison – Americans spend $455 Billion a year on Christmas! (presumably celebrating the birth of our homeless, penniless, savior – the one who said He came to preach good news to the poor, comfort the broken hearted, and heal the sick) It is part of a much larger ministry center and outreach project being led by Vapor Sports Ministries. The Scobee family, members of our church, have been carrying the burden for establishing this well on their own – and they’ve been trying to raise the funds for quite some time now. The original cost was estimated at about $60,000. Approximately $30,000 is still needed.
I hope you’ll be a part of our Christmas offering this year.