Ft Wayne - Part 3

In the post below I told you about our 2nd church visit this weekend. We then pulled out of the parking lot and drove down the road to Grace Gathering (formerly Grace Fellowship Church) in New Haven.

We learned of Grace because they used the same company that is working on the design for our future facilities dreaming at Faith Church. The McKnight Group just completed this project and they have been using it for about 6 weeks. Grace has a lot of similarities to Faith Church in their past, present and future stories. They are just a couple of years ahead of our journey. Check them out at http://www.gracegathering.com/

They put on an amazing children’s program called Kidstuf which is a package program from Northpointe Ministries. Its runtime is sandwiched between their 2 services so that a family can come and worship together at Kidstuf from 10:10a-10:50a. And then you can leave your children there for a more small group oriented time as the parents go to the worship service.

The building is almost the same square footage as the design that we are working on for our plans. At the Information Desk we received a free coupon for coffee drinks at the café. The café was hopping and people seemed to be loving the seating areas around the fireplace. The pastor was a solid teacher and the environment of the room was a really great environment for worship. They had about 300 chairs set up auditorium style with another 200 seating options around tables on the perimeter.

One thing that really stood out at Grace was the large and passionate team of volunteers. They have people stationed all over the place and everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing. It was exciting to see people find joy in serving.

They tried to accomplish a combination of industrial contemporary surfaces with warmth and comfort and it really worked well. Because of their similarities, it really gave us a window into what the ministries of Faith Church might feel like in a facility designed for the future.