April 17, 2007 by Al Hammer.

Here are pictures of the progress to date on the lower level layout. You can see the load bearing walls where the footers have been laid for the interior walls as well as the outside walls which will all be concrete and rebar filled masonry.

Looking from North to South

Looking from South to North

Posted in New Cut Road Building Progress | No Comments »

April 13, 2007 by Larry Resch.

We finally got the web cam and the uploading of the picture from it working. You can see the image (updated hourly) here. Note that at night, you may only see a black square….

Next on my “to do” for this thing is to get it to upload only during the day, try to improve the resolution, and to clean up the image archive page.

[Update 4-15-07: I tweaked the link for the web cam…]

Posted in New Cut Road Building Progress | 1 Comment »

April 11, 2007 by Andy Lunt.

What a great thrill it was this past Easter Sunday to sing powerful choruses like Christ the Lord is Risen Today, He Reigns, and–of course–The Hallelujah Chorus with 500 or 600 other faithful followers of the risen Christ. I couldn’t help but think as we praised God together how awesome it will be to be able to repeat that same experience week after week in our new building. With seating for more than 500, we have the opportunity to involve many more people in praising God every week. What a blessing God has given us! May we always remember to use our new facility–along with everything God gives us–to praise and honor God.

As we enter this transition year, it’s hard to resist comparing our journey to the experience of the Hebrew people as they left Egypt, traveled through the wilderness and–finally–moved into the new land God had provided for them. I expect we will experience many of the same thoughts and feelings I imagine they experienced. No doubt we will grieve as we anticipate the loss of our life in the “Egypt” on Glen Mar Road. Despite the limitations of parking, seating and classroom space that make it virtually impossible to reach more people for Christ, it has been our home for many years. Many folks were born during our time there; countless others were baptized, confirmed, married. And it has been the place where we’ve learned to praise the Lord in worship.

In many ways we are entering our own wilderness experience. Though we have God’s promise and some idea of what the new land might be like, we cannot know for sure until we actually move in and begin to experience life there. Hopefully we can avoid some of the physical suffering the Hebrew people endured during their wilderness sojourn. No doubt we will experience many emotional pangs, though. It will be important and helpful for us to acknowledge and talk about the things we are feeling. It will be absolutely essential for us to accept, love and support each other on the journey.

While there is much we do not and cannot know about the year (and years) ahead, I am absolutely convinced of this much: our wilderness experience will produce the same result as that experienced by the Hebrews. It was during their time in the wilderness they realized that God was leading them. And it was during that same time they learned like never before to trust that God would provide for their needs no matter what.

I believe this next year will lead us to that same kind of trust in God to provide for us as we seek to follow God’s will for us.

It will be important for us to remember these bedrock values of our faith:

1) God never gives a blessing (like a piece of property or new building) as a reward for past service, but always as a way of equipping God’s people to serve God and others.

2) Whenever God calls an individual or a community to do anything, God always provides everything needed.

If we keep those assurances in our minds and hearts while loving and supporting one another as we travel through this next year, then I’m confident that–when next Easter rolls around–we will be able to Praise the Lord in even more awesome and majestic ways!

Posted in Pastors Ponderings | No Comments »

April 4, 2007 by Larry Resch.

If you looked around the sanctuary recently, you may have noticed some changes — new speakers in the front of the church, stage lighting along the sides and back, and a new sound board in the narthex.

In the near (?) future, we can expect to see the wall behind the cross resurfaced with a rock facing similar to what is in the lobby area; reduction in the size of the lower chancel platform and “reengineering” of the chancel railing to be an easy to remove railing; removal of pulpit; addition of window treatments; replacement of pews with comfortable chairs to allow flexibility in the Sanctuary layout and more seating; painting of all walls; new carpet; and a new ceiling in the Narthex.

It is also rumored that both lobbies will be repainted with new ceilings and marble flooring.

I’m excited about the face lift the building will be getting and the fact that God is moving us forward on our new site. This move is going to be like a roller coaster — we may not feel like we are in control (we’re not, God is), it will be both scary and exciting, and now that we have started the ride, let’s sit back and enjoy it because wherever God is leading us, it’s going to be great when we get there!

Posted in Glenmar Road Building Renovations | No Comments »

April 2, 2007 by Larry Resch.

Al had the web cam installed last week and I spent some time today (ok, a lot of time) trying to get it integrated with the web site so you can see daily photos of what is going on. The good news is that we were able to get the computer to capture the still from the web cam video and also upload a picture along with a mosaic of old pictures. Unfortunately, we have not been successful in the Internet connection. (Yes, I am planning to pay for the licensed version to get rid of the shareware notice…)

You see, we wanted to have this as automated as possible and we share a phone line with the construction folks in the trailer. The dial up providers software require that we manually connect every time we want to get to the Internet and that won’t cut it in terms of automation. DSL lines (for business) cost ~$120 per month and that is too expensive… so for now, the web cam is working but nothing is being posted except the photos that Al takes and emails to me…

At least I got to stand in the new IT space….

Posted in New Cut Road Building Progress | 1 Comment »