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.