Author: tbc

Dear Church Family,

It was on Pentecost Sunday in 2010 that Christen and I joined you for worship for the first time. As we wandered into the sanctuary that first time, doves suspended throughout the sanctuary came into view. When we looked closer, we found on each dove the testimony of a church member. Samuel Lian’s was the first one we read. I turned my head and in the center of the sanctuary, suspended and cascading down, was a great column of orange and red fabric. I stopped in my tracks and remember whispering to myself, “Wow. These people know how to worship!”

When we gather in the sanctuary and lead each other in word and song, we offer up our very best to God. We do these things, because in worship we find our being in God so that we might find our doing in the world. It is the center of all that we do as God’s people. We gather and we lift up, because God is eager to gather with us and to pull us together into a diverse, beautiful, and sometimes messy community.

For nearly five years now, I have been taking part in these sacred acts with you. I have been with you in worship and in ministry. I have been with you in clothes closets and in house blessings. I have been allowed to hold your newborn children and also your own hands in prayer before turning you over to your surgeon’s care. I have broken bread with you and shared your dining room tables with you. I have found myself up into the waking dawn with you on my mind and I have slept like a carefree child, knowing that sunrise brought with it the opportunity to be with you in worship. I have been with you.

You have let me tread the sacred ground of your lives, but what you may not hear often enough is that you have tread the sacred ground of my life, too. No life follows even the best well-laid plans or happens according to expectation, and that has been doubly true for Christen and I these past few years. We have become acutely acquainted with loss and grief. But no matter how dark it became in the noontime of our lives, you were present with us and your presence has been a balm in the tender places of our lives.

No word lives up to what we feel about the time we’ve shared with you or how we feel about you, our lovely and deeply-loved church family. We have been with you. And from my first internship on, you have raised me right, Tabernacle Baptist Church. You have provided more than mere opportunity. You have given me your trust and your guiding hand, and, in so doing, you have equipped me with the skills needed to make the next step.

Now it is time.

I have officially accepted the call to serve as Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Colorado Springs, and while my time as your Associate Pastor officially concludes on December 31, I will be with you in worship one last time as we gather to celebrate Epiphany on January 4.

While I am eager to get there and to get busy with this new thing God has placed on my horizon, it is with difficulty that I leave you. I will miss you, and deeply so. But I also cannot help but believe that God is up to something grand here in our midst. The story of the Church has always been one of raising up the Saints and then sending them out to continue the work. Today, you are once again playing your part in that grand story of God’s love and faithfulness. You have raised me up. You have equipped me. Now, it is time that you send me.

So I go, gratefully bearing the strong imprint of Tabernacle Baptist Church in both my life and ministry.

As always — I leave you with all my best,

Rev. Dan Schumacher

 

Sterling Severns and Nelson Melton have been working with members of the Tabernacle Child Care Center team throughout this year to engage them in our God-Sized Vision campaign.  Those efforts continued on Monday, December 1st when some Child Care Center students’ parents met with Sterling in the Fellowship Hall.  The Question and Answer Session offered an introduction to the renovation, as it specifically relates to improvements in our Child Care Center Ministry.  The session provided information and elicited suggestions to meet the specific needs of families in our Child Care Center Ministry.

Sterling explained that the Tabernacle Child Care Center started at a time in the church’s history when more and more women were joining the workforce, as with many churches across the country.  Our Child Care Center has grown to be one of the best in our city, utilizing space that was originally constructed for the church’s Family Ministry.  This use of our space enabled activity focused on children every day of the week, not just on weekends.  Now is the time for an uplift to that space.

The highest percentage of the renovation planned in our Vision campaign will create positive changes to the Williams Building, where our Child Care Center is located.  Those changes include:

• New Entrances
• Enhanced Access, both from a security perspective and increased ramp accessibility for wheelchairs and strollers
• Electrical Upgrades
• Plumbing Upgrades
• New Dining/Gathering Area and Kitchen on the 2nd Floor
• New Elevator, providing wheelchair access to the 2nd Floor of the Child Care Center (as well as the 3rd Floor)
• A conscious decision to place the pastoral staff offices in the heart of the church, close to the Child Care Center and offices.   We will work with the architects for supporting quiet in offices and areas where appropriate.

It is also important to note that one of the requirements in the selection of our General Contractor was to ensure that ongoing childcare operations would be addressed during construction.  Examples of considerations of our children while we make renovations are:

• No class gets moved during renovation activities.
• Quiet and safety are important, so false walls are planned.
• The contractor is aware of this and is planning for weekend and night hours in their cost estimates.
• Our campaign assumes growth of the church in our future, but not growth in size of our Child Care Center Ministry.  We have agreed that the current size of the center helps drive the high quality of the care that we provide there.

Attendees at the session made several suggestions for consideration as we move forward in work with our architects:

• Make sure that there are gates leading into the open space in front of the Child Care Center and Church Office entrances.  That open space can be used for an outdoor gathering spot for adults and children.
• Address how we control access to the “side” entrance to the Child Care Center and the play area/blacktop on that same side of the building.  A covered entrance might be helpful for that side doorway.
• Large bike racks are important to parents, staff and neighbors.
• Provide storage for strollers for our children in proximity to the ramp areas where children will be loaded and rolled outside.  Also make sure that the ramp access does not create a long “walk” to get to the entrances/exits.

Our Child Care Center will be initiating fund-raising in the near future.  We will continue to keep everyone up-to-date with our progress in reaching our $2 million dollar goal for construction that is planned to be completed by the end of 2015.  Your prayers for our success and your help in meeting our goals are greatly appreciated.

After church services on Sunday, November 2^nd, Sterling Severns led the last of three information and comment exchange sessions sponsored by the Construction & Renovation Committee.   These sessions give everyone a chance to understand how specific spaces will be affected in the future, to have questions answered about planned renovation changes, as well as to offer comments to be considered as we begin working with the architects for detailed drawings.

This third session focused on changes to be made on the third floor of the Williams Building:

• Creation of Parsonage Residences to Support TBC Growth/Staffing Needs
• Enlarged Bunk Room Space for Various Mission Teams,  and
• Return Missionary Lodging

The tour began with an explanation of the new elevator planned in the construction project.  This elevator will take members with a key for access to the third floor of the Williams building.  Privacy to this area is an important element of the design, understanding that this space is intended for pastoral apartments and lodging areas for mission team members.  Mission teams include those who support mission work alongside Tabernacle in the summers.

As the tour moved to the third floor of the Williams Building, participants were able to gain insight into how significant the planned residences are to the future of our church.  Our nature of training, serving internally as well as externally, and sending over the years has helped to create a number of opportunities for this space.   Options include:

• Understanding that Tabernacle is growing, we are in need of finding creative ways of addressing how we also grow our staff to best meet the needs of our diverse congregation. Our experience over the years with pastoral interns and residents has been incredibly beneficial for both Tabernacle and the students, and therefore continuing to fully support those programs is important.  Having a parsonage apartment potentially available for an intern or resident is a key consideration in the floor plan design.

• Our multi-cultural nature presents a need for Burmese-rooted pastoral support.  Having the option of providing housing for an individual who is completing pastoral studies and simultaneously serving as part-time pastoral support to our Burmese-born congregation creates a mutually advantageous situation for Tabernacle.

• Having the apartment space will also present us with the option of providing lodging space for missionaries on furlough.

• We have had at least 20 interns over the past 10 years.  Those interns are now serving in a number of locations all over the country, adding to the many possible sources of mission teams that are willing to serve our church and our community.  The planned bunk room space will accommodate at least 20 mission team members at a time, and will be built with the flexibility to be used for smaller numbers when appropriate.   We have every reason to believe that the frequency and variety of types of mission support will increase over time, and therefore the potential for use of this space will also expand.  The small kitchen space and availability of bathrooms/showers adjacent to the bunk room space will make use of the area comfortable for the occupants.

One of the questions asked during this tour was related to the privacy of those who would be living on the third floor, as well as security for the church while there are occupants on that floor.  The specific stairwell that leads only to the Williams Building and not to the rest of the church, as well as the elevator requirement for a key to unlock access to the third floor are all means of ensuring privacy.  The design team plans to take these needs into consideration as they finalize the design drawings.

Preserving artifacts of our church history and finding ways to ensure easier access to the many items that tell our story have also been mentioned in all sessions held.  The Construction & Renovation Committee is working to address those desires as we work with the architects in the design stage.

Thanks to all of you who participated in these informative sessions!