Donated building boosts church’s ministry
09-03-2010By Amy Forbus
Editor
Christ Way United Methodist Church has called several locations home since the Rev. Herschel Richardson was appointed in October 2007 to plant a new faith community in Jonesboro.A Sunday school room at St. Paul UMC came first.
“They were really helpful to us,” Richardson said of the St. Paul staff and congregation. Things like sharing a photocopier and providing even one room’s square footage can make all the difference in the early phases of a new church start.
As the new, multi-racial congregation prepared to begin holding worship services, they sought space in the local YMCA. Worship launched there in June 2008.
It didn’t take long to find yet another home: By October, just a year after its beginning, Christ Way was meeting in Fox Meadow Intermediate School. Though it required setting up the gymnasium every Friday and taking everything down after worship each Sunday, the space worked well for the growing congregation. The school district wasn’t even charging them rent.
But as summer break approached, so did a wrinkle in their arrangement. The school let Richardson know that it planned to use the break to do some maintenance work on the gym floor. Christ Way needed to find another space.
With just a few weeks’ notice, Richardson and the Rev. Kurt Boggan, Northeast District superintendent, began canvassing the area for potential meeting sites.
“We were just praying and looking for a spot because the school had told us they needed the building for the summer,” Richardson said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have really been looking. [The school] was a good place to be, and it was in our mission field.”But Richardson discovered another possible option in that same mission field. It was a former church building, not far from the school and in a great location on Stadium Boulevard.
With a little investigation, Richardson and Boggan learned that the building’s next door neighbor, the Fletcher Dodge Chrysler car dealership, owned it and was using it for storage. They approached the dealership with a proposal for rental, and soon had a deal. The Northeast District rented the building using funds designated for new church starts, and for the first time, Christ Way occupied a space that had been designed for worship.
Six months into the rental agreement, the space was working out so well that Richardson and Boggan decided to ask the whether the dealership be willing to let the congregation move from renting the building to buying it.
What they didn’t know was that this faith community and Frank Fletcher, the owner of the dealership, already had a connection: membership in the United Methodist Church. Fletcher is a member of Lakewood UMC in North Little Rock.
“We got a reply back in a very exciting and gracious way that Frank Fletcher was willing to donate the building to the work,” Boggan said. “That was great news, and his philanthropy and generosity was very much appreciated by the congregation, the United Methodist Church, and the [Arkansas Conference] cabinet as well.”
That conversation happened in January of this year. By July, all the paperwork was finalized—including an appraisal that put the property’s value at $515,000—and Christ Way UMC owned the building where it worships and serves.
“It’s been a great step for the church to move forward in making disciples,” Boggan said. “You cannot believe how it has expanded the possibilities for this congregation. They’re debt-free, with appropriate building space for all the growth they’ll experience for years ahead.”
While it’s helpful for a church to have a building, paying for it can become a burden. But thanks to the generosity of a fellow United Methodist, that’s a burden Christ Way doesn’t have.
“[This donation] allows us to pour funding into ministry, outreach and evangelism,” Boggan said.
In addition to the generous donor and the flourishing Christ Way community, Boggan credits the groundwork and training provided by the Rev. Bob Crossman, director of new church starts and congregational advancement for the Conference. “Bob’s work with new church starts has really enabled each of us as DSes to help. He works with us, and with those clergy appointed to new church starts, and enables our work to be most effective.”
Martha Taylor contributed to this report.
