You might want to skip this post if you have a weak stomach...

The decomposed skeletal remains of a family of birds

You might want to skip this post if you have a weak stomach.

Several months ago when we began the project to repair the building in West Conshohoken with the goal of starting a new church there soon, we quickly discovered that getting the building ready was going to take a fair amount of work.

Various volunteers have been helping us.  We're also being assisted by Mike, a contractor from Core Creek Community Church.  Mike is in the process of replacing some of the damaged ceilings in the building and came across a little surprise today.

For some time (we're not sure how long, but possibly years), a piece of soffit was missing over the door to the side entrance.  We replaced that missing piece, but during the years when it was missing, it clearly invited birds and other animals to make a home in this part of the building.

As the ceiling was being replaced in the side entrance today, this is what began to rain down...

It looks like birds have been nesting up there for quite a while and some even considered it their final resting place.

I thought I would share this with you because if you ever feel led to get involved in replanting a church, this might be the type of surprise you eventually encounter as well.  Look at how many bags it took to clean up the mess... 

The work you can see and the work you can't...

The main room on the lower level is primed and ready for paint.

We are trying to be somewhat aggressive with the remaining work that needs to be accomplished around the building in West Conshohocken.  Our goal is to have the work finished by the end of 2016 so we can begin the work of planting the church in earnest.  We are trying to carve out one (possibly two) partial days each week to dedicate to this project and that seems to be helping.

Barb, helping us with trim painting

The main room in the lower level is primed and ready for paint.  The back room is partially primed and is ready to be trimmed.

Andrea, trimming some of the areas near the ceiling

We have most of the junk and clutter removed from the building at this point, but there are still a few items that need a new home.  We have three pianos we'd like to give away and some other odds and ends, including Christmas decorations.

John, rolling the primer in the back room on the lower level.  This is the room we loaded up with junk at first when we were trying to bring some sense of order to the building.  Most of the junk is gone now.

What you can't see from these pictures is the work taking place behind the scenes.  Matt Thomas is hard at work getting a sound booth built and figuring out the other logistics of sound and video for the sanctuary.  Mike Ivins is in the process of remodeling the bathrooms and he also coordinated a visit with a carpet installer to take measurements so he can give us a bid.

Will we be finished with the remaining painting by the end of this month?  With the other interior projects be completed by the end of 2016?  I don't know, but we're getting close enough that it seems likely.  Thanks for your prayers!

Some visitors from up north stopped to lend a hand

Matt Macking helping us get cleaned up from some of the work we did earlier in the week.

Typically, we try to carve out one work day each week to work on the building, but this week, we snuck an extra day in.  Late last night, we learned that we would have some extra help.  Matt Macking (the Director of the Pocono Mountain Bible Conference) and Mitchel Raboci drove down to lend a hand.

Mitchel Raboci at work, cleaning up debris

We loaded the organ that was removed from the building onto a truck, did some more painting, cleaned various light fixtures, used the shop vac to clean up debris from other projects, packed more items to donate and did some additional wall repairs.  It was a full afternoon / evening.

The organ was ready to be loaded in the truck.  Let's just say it wasn't a "light" object to try to move.

Our thanks to Matt and Mitchel for their help!  We even provided them with two trophies we found in the midst of the random items the old church left behind.  

Winners!

Organ removal surgery

Dylon climbed into the wall to help us remove the organ speakers

Organs don't seem to be quite as popular as they once were.  We have an organ that we want to pass along to someone else, but they're hard to sell and just as hard to give away for free.  It's like offering someone a tube-TV.  No one seems to want them.

Well, thankfully, we found someone who was willing to offer us a very minimal amount for the organ, so we began the process of removing it and getting the heavy speakers out of the walls.  It wasn't easy, but we got it done.

Matt Thomas helping us remove the organ wiring

We also had the help of Matt Thomas this week.  Matt is going to be the brains behind our new sound system and he began putting together his plan for running cables, creating a sound booth and installing a projector.  He even created this helpful floor print of the sanctuary for us.

There's new evidence that we have not yet chased the raccoon out of the building.  Looks like it's time to take a more aggressive approach.

Paw prints from the resident raccoon

As always, thanks for your prayers!

Guess who we found living in the attic...

The outside of the building looks nice on days like today.  The stucco has been repaired.  The exterior has been painted and the doors are sporting their new color.

As you can tell from the series of pictures we've posted, there has been a lot of work that we've had to do on the building to get it ready to start hosting worship services, Bible studies and other community events.  We're starting to feel like the end is in sight and in the coming weeks, we hope to have all the painting complete so we can have the flooring installed.  (We're waiting to do the flooring last.  That way, we don't have to worry about paint drips.)

This past week, we had a couple groups go to the church and work for several hours.  We were able to load a trailer with more of the junk we purged from the building and the back room where we've been collecting all the clutter is now just about empty.

More junk being purged from the building

Before and after of the back room.  It was piled high with clutter.  Now it's just about empty.

Mike Ivins, a contractor from Core Creek Community Church is helping us with some of the additional repairs that need to be made to the building.  This week, he repaired the vent at the crest of the roof.  It had been bent by animals that were getting into the building, so he fixed it and put a metal screen on it to prevent animals from attempting to enter the attic again.

He also started work to repair some of the damaged ceilings and is fixing the front window areas where we had a damaged stained glass window. 

While Mike was up in the attic working, he came across a creature that has been doing some damage to the building.  We previously thought it was a squirrel that had ripped apart speaker mesh and left a mess in other areas.  It turns out, we have a raccoon living in the attic.  We're giving him an eviction notice.

There has been a raccoon living in the attic.  He wasn't happy about being found.

 That's all that's making news for now.  Thanks again for your prayers.  We're getting much closer to the day when we'll be able to start hosting meetings and other events for the community.

Support from sister churches

We continue to make steady progress on getting the building ready for meetings, gatherings and worship services.  It always seems to take longer than we wish it would, but we keep trucking along.  Still lots of stuff to remove from building (some junk, some sellable on Craigslist).  The good news is that since the weather is cooling off, it's becoming less oppressive to work inside the building.  For the most part, it was rather comfortable in the building today.

We are grateful for the support of area pastors and churches.  This was evident over the past couple weeks.

The Seventh Street Church in Shamokin, PA recently reached out to us to ask how they could help.  We told them we had a need for cleaning supplies and paper products.  I met up with their pastor, Dave Wildoner, last week and he filled my trunk with supplies and told me, "There's more on the way!"  Thank you Seventh Street!

Generous donations from our sister church in Shamokin!

This afternoon, Pastor Kerry Ritts from the Hatboro Community Church brought his paint clothes, grabbed a brush, and painted trim in the room that is going to be the future nursery of the church once the new church is planted.  Thank you Kerry and HCC!

Pastor Kerry Ritts helping us get the nursery room painted

We're grateful for sister churches that value church planting and are stepping up to help.  Keep praying for us as we seek to get the rest of the building concerns addressed quickly so we can move on to Phase 2 of this work.

Big improvements to the building's exterior

The exterior stucco has been repaired and the building has been painted grey with white trim.

Well, it's been more than a month since I have been able to post an update.  We had a work day earlier in August, but then were forced to take several weeks off because of other ministry obligations.  During that time, however, the work continued in our absence as we contracted with a local professional to repair the exterior stucco of the building and then give the outside a fresh coat of paint.

I was looking forward to seeing the newly updated exterior yesterday when we arrived to work on the building.  Everything looked great.  The outside of the building looks so much nicer now that it's been cleaned, repaired and painted.  Several neighbors made a point to tell us just how nice they thought it looked and how much they appreciated the improvements we have been making to the property.

This side of the building needed the most repair to the stucco, but we are very pleased with how it looks now that it has been repaired and painted.

During the afternoon and evening hours, we had the privilege to talk to six neighbors.  Some we had spoken to before, but most were new people that we just met.  There has been a lot of curiosity as to what is going on with the building so we have been sharing about our vision for a church and letting them take a look inside to see the progress we're making.

We spent the evening cutting the grass, removing more garbage/clutter, repairing some lights and painting some trim.  We also made a change to the color of the front doors.  They were bright red, but we didn't like how that looked so now they are being painted "Norwegian Blue" which is the same color we used on the accent wall behind the stage area.

As schedules allow, we are going to keep aiming to work at the church at least one day each week until we have the building updates completed.  We still enough to do to keep us all busy for a while, but the progress is starting to become very evident to our volunteers and to the community.  Thanks for your continued prayers.

Undeposited checks and an excellent trim painter

Pastor John, Pastor Mario and Joel Cordero

Each week, we try to carve out one day to work on the building in West Conshohocken.  Our tasks have been pretty much the same for the past four weeks.  Some of us roll paint.  Some of us paint the trim with brushes.  Some of us organize and purge garbage.  Some of us patch holes in the walls.  And, most importantly, we sweat profusely because the building is ridiculously warm this time of year.  But it's a blast and we enjoy it.

It was a sweaty 94 degrees today in the sanctuary

This week, we experienced two surprises.  The first surprise came in the form of a visit from Pastor Mario Cordero and his son Joel.  Mario is the pastor of a church in Hazleton, PA.  They heard of the work we're trying to do and they offered to volunteer for a day to help us make progress.  I warned Mario ahead of time that we were still doing a lot of painting, but that didn't seem to intimidate him.  Now I know why it didn't intimidate him.  He's an excellent painter.  When my wife Andrea saw how well he painted, she was thrilled.  Mario and Joel worked with us from early morning until mid-afternoon when we needed to leave.

The other surprise came in the form of getting a locked closet opened.  My son, Jay, was curious about a closet that had a lock on it.  We hadn't tried to open it yet because there was too much other work to do and we mistakenly assumed that it probably just contained more junk that we'd have to sort out.  But Jay was curious and he asked permission to see if he could get the door open.  I suggested that he use a drill on the lock.  While he was getting the tools he needed, Pastor Mario looked at it and realized that it could be opened if we removed the door moulding.  So that's what he did and then we sorted through what we found inside.

When we first were given access to the building, Tom Wambach and his daughter Diana from Hatboro Community Church looked inside and found thousands of dollars in money that for some reason the old church never deposited.  We all assumed that that was everything, but behind the locked closet door, we found several thousand more dollars in uncashed checks (unfortunately it's too late to deposit them now).  We also found $345 in cash and another $95 that was earmarked to be donated to the Pocono Mountain Bible Conference.

Organizing and counting the money that was found locked in the closet

I don't know why the checks and cash had never been deposited, but it seems clear that there must have been a complete breakdown of order during the final months of the old church's life.  Sadly, they also left behind thousands in unpaid bills which is odd because the checks that had been given would have been enough to pay for those expenses.  But there they were, locked in a closet, waiting to be discovered once it was too late to deposit them.

So that's our most recent update.  Our next workday is going to involve some more painting and some additional junk removal, but as each week goes by, we're making steady progress.  Thanks for your prayers.

Hannah & Renee are helping to prime the dark stripe areas on the downstairs paneling

The entryway is now in the process of getting painted

Jay moves the ladders for us so Andrea can paint the trim on the sanctuary windows

The backdrop to the stage area is a deep "Norwegian Blue."

Dylon helping to clean and prime the downstairs paneling