Spacial Considerations, March, 2011

During the months of December, 2010 and January, 2011, the site team met to discuss the future spacial needs of our congregation as a precursor to determining building and parking requirements for our new site.

Lower Floor View of Skiver Building

Skiver Building.  We started with the space we are currently using (the "Skiver Building") and asked, "How can this be improved?"   We asked this question of each functional area of our ministry: Worship, Christian Education, Congregational Life, Christian Outreach, Small Groups, Personnel and Administration.

Today we are utilizing most of the Skiver building, which is approximately 10,000 square feet.


 New Space Considerations.  When we consider building a new space, we want to answer the following questions:

1. What is needed to serve God's purposes today?
2. What is needed to serve God's purposes in the future? 

Spacial Requirements Spreadsheet for CMPF - Phase I

We have proposed a number of changes to our current allocation based on anticipated growth and also on the observations of using our current space - things that don't work as good as they could if we could "just have more space".   A number of these spaces were identified as possible "shared spaces" with the YMCA organization, but how we end up actually using them is still being considered.

In summary, we are asking for:

• 23,000 square feet of total allocation (roughly 2X what we currently utilize in the Skiver space)
• 7000 square feet for worship space
• 6000 square feet for community fellowship and activities including a 1000 square foot kitchen
• 2000 square feet for office staff, support
• 8000 square feet for Christian Education programs including dedicated youth space

What YMCA Needs.   The spreadsheet shown above is the kind of input that the YMCA needs to create a preliminary architectural drawing for accommodating both the YMCA and CMPF organizational needs in the future.

Example YMCA utilizing 65,000 square feet

The drawing should include a building outline showing each of the individual rooms, hallways, doors, closets, etc.   This won't be a final drawing, just a concept drawing of what might work.

An example of such a drawing is shown on the right.


Congregational Input.   This week we begin a series of congregational meetings to help identify how our existing ministry areas will work with a YMCA organization as well as consider new ideas not previously considered for ministry growth.   One of the many questions we will want to answer during the coming weeks and months are:

1) What is the scope of community involvement we envision as our ministry grows?
2) Does the full scope as we conceive it become reachable with the design considerations we have?
3) Are there building features and/or spacial considerations that go beyond what we have conceived of up to this point?    If so, what are they?

Our next meeting with the YMCA organization is in a few weeks.  At that meeting, we hope to receive a proposal from them as to how a church+YMCA might look like in terms of a proposed schematic drawing.  We are looking forward to this!   Using ideas stemming from the congregational meetings during the next few weeks we hope to produce the best possible concept of a community center that ultimately will be agreed upon by both organizations within just a few months.

Continue to pray for God's blessing and guidance in all that we do!

Blessings!

Douglas Hoy
Chair, CMPF Site Development Team

Visit to Sunset Presbyterian Church, February 9, 2011

During our joint CMPF-YMCA meeting on February 2, 2011, a suggestion was made to visit the multi-purpose space at Sunset Presbyterian Church together as a group.  The idea of identifying as much "shared space" as possible was discussed - in all areas of building use and ministry focus.  The largest space utilized in a church is the place of worship - often referred to as a "sacred space", "worship hall", or "chapel".  Many churches start out their life using less-than-desirable multi-function spaces like school gyms.  Cooper Mountain Presbyterian Fellowship (CMPF) started out this way at Cooper Mountain Elementary School about 15 years ago.  The question for us is: do we want to go "back to a gym" or is there an alternative approach that will be satisfying yet provide good value to the overall YMCA-CMPF partnership?

As we visited the site the following week, we began to ask ourselves a number of questions:

• What is required to create a sense of sacred space?
• What features should be part of this space?
• How flexible can we go?  What is the cost of this flexibility?
• If we don't allow the YMCA to use our special worship space, can we justify the cost of its construction with other mid-week activities that are separate from YMCA programs?
• What is important to those in worship that would indicate the right amount of balance between mid-week non-religious activity and weekend worship of God?
• If the space can be constructed with "Transforming Features" that allow it to be better identified with these different building uses (for example, Friday afternoon men's basketball game versus Saturday night worship service), what features should we consider?  How much will they cost?
• If we can do this, should we do this?  Can we afford to build our own space?

Over the next few months, we hope to begin answering these questions.  They will be pivotal for our success moving forward.

Peace!

Douglas Hoy
Chair, CMPF Site Development Team
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Here are some pictures taken that day of the multi-use building used for worship at Sunset Presbyterian Church.

An Evening with the YMCA, January 29, 2011

Last Saturday at our annual potluck and meeting, Bob Hall, President and CEO from the YMCA Columbia-Willamette made a  25 minute presentation to the congregation following dinner.  This was followed by about 15 minutes of Q&A.  A video production of this event has been divided up into 3 parts:

An Evening with the YMCA, PART I - Intro by Bob followed by a 3 minute Video about Christian Ministry within the Columbia-Willamette YMCA organization (10:48 minutes)
An Evening with the YMCA, PART II - Additional material and answers to questions given to Bob in advance of meeting (13:44 minutes)
An Evening with the YMCA, PART III - open Q&A portion from members in attendance (13:40 minutes)

Thanks to all the members of our A/V team and especially Rick Terletzky for video post-processing this event.

Doug Hoy
Chair, CMPF Site Dev Team