July 26, 2024
Dear church,
As many of you know, we are in the process of preparing our building for the new preschool that will open this fall. We are just weeks away from the licensing team showing up to approve the spaces as safe for young children. This means that many people are spending many hours in the preschool rooms – cleaning, moving furniture, painting walls, repairing things that were broken, etc. It’s really exciting to see the progress and anticipate the beginning of this new partnership! (And if you have any time to help, contact Lisa Wolf! We could use more people!)
Most of the spaces that the preschool will use will not interfere with the spaces we typically spend time in as a church community, but there is one space that we will be sharing on a regular basis: Friendship Hall. Friendship Hall is probably best known to this community as the room where we have our Sunday forums. For the preschool, it will be the room they use for large motor play when the weather doesn’t allow them to go outside. Because of this, we need to make sure that Friendship Hall is safe for children and licensing-ready by mid-August.
To keep the children safe while they play, we need to remove the statue of Jesus from Friendship Hall. We’ve looked into keeping it where it is, but it is not possible to secure it to the wall in a way that is both safe and aesthetically pleasing.
The Council and I have decided that we need to find a new home for this statue. It was gifted to Grace several years ago by a family who is no longer part of the congregation and is not attached to the statue remaining at Grace. We’re sharing this with you all now because we have a couple weeks before we need to rehome the statue, and the Council and I want your input! If you have ideas about where we could move the statue or to whom we could give it, we welcome your thoughts. Please reach out to a Council member or to me by August 9, as Council will be making a decision on this the following week.
As we go through this change, please be in touch with me if a conversation would be helpful. Even though Council will need to make a final decision for where to move the statue, I want to collect as much input as possible so we can make the decision together as a church, journeying through change healthfully and faithfully.
In Christ and in care for this community,
Pastor Sarah, along with the Church Council
Every Friday, we send an email to the congregation and any others who would like to learn more about the Grace community. The last four Friday emails are posted below.