Hunting for New Meeting Space

It's Friday night September 11th at 6:50pm. I'm at TGIF's in Enfield eating the $5 special with my family and Dan & Danielle Ramirez, and I get a call. The short version is that the new owners of the food services at the Crowne Plaza (now a Holiday Inn) want us to start paying over triple what we currently pay for rent each week effective immediately. The day before we got this call our staff met for our monthly strategic meeting to discuss (among other things) other possible meeting locations, because we're very close to having grown out of our current meeting space. So, having needed to move out, and facing a huge increase in what we pay, New Day is on the hunt for a new location.

Yesterday I set up an appointment with Eric (a realestate agent Lester Jarvis found), to look at a huge commercial space for lease behind the Gold's Gym on Route 5 in Enfield, only a couple miles from where we're at now. I meet with him on Wednesday at 9:30am.

I also stopped by Asnuntuck College and inquired about meeting there. Someone is looking into whether they would even consider it, and they are going to get back to me soon.

Rachel Axtmann hooked me up with her parents realestate agent and he collected all our info and is looking for spaces that fit the criteria.

Everyone in the church is praying. When I first sent out an email about all this, I received 53 emails back from people saying "We're praying." What a comfort to know this whole process is covered in prayer!

My brother is a realestate agent too and he's going to be helping me today to find space that would meet our needs. We're looking for 1) a good location, 2) an affordable location, 3) Sunday morning availability, 4) ample parking.

I crunch the numbers yesterday to determine what we could afford (I'm not going to post them here. Sorry!). We now know exactly what we can and cannot afford. I'm very encouraged by the story of my friend Scott Axtmann, a fellow church planter, who recently got a lease space for his portable church for only $3,000 (when they were asking $11,000). That's what God can do!

My favorite option of all the options we looked into was the Enfield High School. The location isn't far from where we're at now, it has enough seats and space so we could grow there for a while, there's plenty of kids classrooms, we'd never get bumped like we do now in the Crowne Plaza because nothing happens at the school on Sundays, there's tons of parking, it's affordable, etc. And whoever comes to our church now would only have to drive minutes farther to get there.

We also looked at the old Kia dealership on Route 5 in Enfield (very close to where we meet now). It's like 56,000 sq feet though! And we only need anywhere from 7,200 sq ft (double what we have now) to 10,800 sq ft (triple what we have now). We currently use 2,400 sq ft for our adults (that's 200 chairs max) and 1,200 sq ft for our three kids class rooms for a total of 3,600 sq ft.

Jon and Sarah Watson came with Kristin, me and kids yesterday since they were off work and helped us look around and investigate our options. It's so great not to be doing this by myself. I totally feel the support of everyone from our church. And it inspires me to continue working hard and to continue to trust God in this situation.

Remember, our theme is TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY! Historically, the church has GROWN through adversity. And we know that God works for the good in all situations for those who love him (Romans 8:28).

That's yesterday's progress. I thought since everyone's praying I keep you updated with a progress report! I've got to get going now. Lot's to do today! Lot's of new locations to consider! Please say a prayer for me!