Three years ago my family and I said yes to the opportunity to return to Troy and start a new church. We prayed long and hard and then stepped out in faith and went to the place we believe God was showing us. We came to Troy and immediately had a church building available to us. In fact, the plan was for us to re-start a dying baptist church, recontextualized for inner-city ministry. The church building and parsonage were transferred over to us to begin this new work. We immediately got to work assessing the condition of our century old church building. While being structurally sound, we soon learned that the buiding needs a complete interior makeover; new electrical service, updated heating and plumbing systems, as well as roof repairs and extensive renovation of basement floor and walls. We began tearing out old, warn out carpeting, flooring, and room dividers in the basement/fellowship hall. We painted the sanctuary and part of the fellowhip hall and put in new indoor/outdoor carpeting. We had the roof patched, replaced plumbing and heating pipes, put a new sump pump in the kitchen and a new electric service meter.At the same time we got busy doing outreach in this distressed community and started to develop a small, but growing congregtion. At one point we were running 35-40 in our worship services and had seen some amazing doors open to us. In February, 2006, another neighborhood church gave us a vacant lot, located across the street from our church building, and we began sponsoring and hosting community events, cookouts, block parties, concerts, etc.
The fruit of our labors has been a few people (wish I could say a lot) committing their lives to Christ. We baptized one young man and are now getting ready to baptize a few more.
Needless to say all of this has not come without struggles and spiritual warfare. The greatest struggle has been the condition of our church building; making timely repairs and maintaining insurance. We are at a point where we can't find an insurance carrier to underwrite our building because of its present condition, unless we immediately address cited repairs. The building needs new electrical service to replace the grossly outdated, inadequate service that is now there. Also cited as issues of concern are the heating and plumbing systems, which we have done repairs on, but are old and need to be replaced. The overall condition of this 10,000 sq.ft brick elephant has rendered it unsafe and unusable. We would need to raise approximately $25,000.00 to address just what needs to be done to make it safe and functional and probably closer to $50,000.00 to put the building in pristine condition.
Dilemma: What to do with this building. Do we abandon this debt free, tax exempt property and go elsewhere? Even if it cost $50,000.00 to address all repairs/renovations, we could not buy or build a new facility for less than twice that (unless we purchase another facility that needs a lot of work). We could abandon the building altogether and rent a nearby storefront/warehouse for $800.00 per month, plus utilities, at least temporarily until we determine what to do with the church building. The ideal plan would be to build a new facility on our ministry lot, which would cost, at minimum, $150,000.oo (for a one story modular unit placed on a poured foundation ). We have a few more options we are praying about. Through all of this we are convinced that God has us where He wants us, and we will not allow our dilemma to stop us or slow us down. We will continue, by the grace and provision of God, to do the work He has called us to.
If you are reading this post and feel led by the Holy Spirit to pray for us, please do!
If you are led by the Holy Spirit to answer our prayers and provide financial assistance to help us, you may send your tax deductible gifts to;
The CORE Church
36 109th St.
Troy, N.Y. 12180
Ear mark for building restoration
