Building fund
If you’ve contributed to our building in Farnborough over the last couple of years, we want to say a massive thankyou to you. Perhaps you have been praying for our building project, perhaps you have given your skills and time to make it a more safe and welcoming place, and perhaps you have given financially to all we’ve achieved so far.
The last few months we started to make really progress towards our building plans in Farnborough. Here’s our Head of Estate Calum Field to bring you up to speed with what’s been happening.
Architectural plans
In December last year we appointed the architecture for the building. After interviewing multiple different ones, we felt such a natural fit with this team. They have worked on many church projects, not just in the UK but also into America and Africa. We feel in really safe hands with them, and it’s been an exciting few months defining the brief with them and starting to hear some of their ideas. We now have some initial 3D designs to work from. Now, these won’t necessarily be the final design we are going to go with, but will give us a clear indication of what is possible and how much the project might cost.
Midweek / Sunday Youth space
As a church, we don’t want to waiting around ‘until the building is finished’ to start making a big impact on our community. One thing we didn’t really have was a clean and comfortable space for smaller groups to meet easily midweek. We also wanted to create an additional room on a Sunday for our Youth to occupy. So during March we have been renovating a space behind the kitchen, within an area which is currently off limits. As you can see from the photos, this is going to be a brilliant space for groups of up to 20 to gather. Both our Revive and Youth teams are making plans to put this space to good use. We hope to open this by May. We are aware this space might not be part of our long term plans, so we’ve done all we can to do the work cost effectively. For example, we were able to source 800 used carpet tiles for an office which was being renovated, saving us money but also looking after the planet as they would of likely gone to landfill. If you’ve been to church in the last of week you may have noticed we have used some of these in our entrance to the building also. A big thank you to the electricians and carpet fitters amongst our community who really helped to make this all happen.
For the project to continue to move forward, we will be needing to raise some more finances. We will be looking at fundraising initiatives, and opportunities around grants and other funding, but we know that the foundation will be through giving from the church community. Over the last two Sundays we’ve taken time in the meeting to ask everyone to prayerfully consider giving into the Farnborough building fund - you can do that online on the Kerith website.
The other thing that we can all do is to pray. Here are some point for you to pray into:
Prayer points
Pray for our architects who are working hard to begin to shape what our space will look like. May God use their skills to shape an amazing space for our community.
Pray that the new midweek and youth space hugely blesses our work in the community and our amazing Youth on a Sunday.
Pray for what finances God may have given you that could be sewn into the Farnborough Building Fund.
We will be sharing more over the coming weeks and months on this exciting project. If you’ve not already then please do subscribe to this blog, as this is where we will send updates as they happen, and also follow our Farnborough facebook page. We have come a long way already – and have a long way to go – but we are so excited to have you along for the journey!