New Church Building!

I’ve now been working here with The Orchard in Oxford for two years. And in those two years we’ve never had our own space. We started out meeting at The Powerhouse which is the Community Arts Council building. The building is used. A lot….A WHOLE lot. So it’s not uncommon for us to show up early on a Sunday morning to set up for church and there was HUUUUGE party the night before, or wedding reception, or gala, or “She got a donk” contest (whatever that is) with some crazy DJ and all of the stuff from the night before is still up. Or a play is set up for a few weeks for rehearsal and performance, and we’re have to work around each other.

Last May we moved into one of the local movie theaters to have church. We got in early on Sunday morning, set up, and then took everything down before the Sunday matinees started. But in September the theater closed down. Oxford wasn’t big enough to support two movie theaters it seemed. So we returned to The Powerhouse. And I’ll say up front that the folks with the Arts Council/Powerhouse have been very gracious.

BUT…we’ve found our own place. We don’t “own” it, but we have a two year lease. And we’re tearing out walls and building walls. Ripping out old carpet. Painting things afresh. Making it “ours”. Etc. The building has been a number of things. A night club. A restaurant. And most recently…a funeral home. But our goal is to make it as “un-funeral homey” as possible.

But we look forward to the stability having our that having own place will provide us as a church. And we look forward to being able to use the building as a way to impact the local community for Christ in ways that extend far beyond just a weekly church service.

But below is a video from one of our workdays. We’ve had a few since, and it is already looking way different.