Why a Building Project?
At last! How long have we been looking and praying for new buildings? Having sold the office on Winchester Street in 2007 we saw that as the first domino to fall in what we expected would be a sequence of dominos! We didn’t realise we would wait so long for the next! But that is God’s timing. And it’s interesting that over last year and into this we have come so far as a small family of Churches in re-defining our shared culture and vision.
Any story has its defining moments and maybe this period is one of them for us… it isn’t the first and won’t be the last… but there is a growing sense of shared purpose, vision and culture into which God has now quite remarkably given us another building. So of course any building and resource God gives us must serve what we are becoming. The story is never about buildings alone, but how are they used, that they enable, and what they represent. And all our buildings represent God’s provision, are there for His glory and to be a blessing to His world. They must ‘shout’ loud and clear the message that God is giving us; namely that everyone is loved by God and of value to him, that he is interested in the whole of our lives, and that he longs to dwell with and amongst all people.
So the addition of Key house and the changing use of our existing buildings must be to facilitate our vision: pioneering, equipping, relationship and whole of life… Extra space must be to enable more of the community to be blessed, fresh initiatives to begin, more training and learning to take place and be places that foster relationship.
Phil Norris, July 2009