Land Update – 5.18.09

I wanted to take this opportunity to update you about our land search.  Just as a reminder, land and a facility are not our vision…they exist to support our vision of teaching people to draw life from God and point others to Him.  So, that said here are the latest land updates:

1.    We have been offered one piece of land on Shanahan Rd about ¾ mile from 23 for about $43,000/acre.  The good part about this land is that it will be close to a new school and a new neighborhood.  The not-so-great part is that it’s closer to the railroad tracks than we would like to be.  Also, Shanahan Rd currently stubs and does not connect for “through traffic.” 

2.    We are talking with three landowners on Peachblow Rd.  Any of those three pieces of land would be closer to Rt. 23 and within “eye shot” of the new county hospital.  None of these pieces of land are officially for sale.  So, it’s taking some time for the owners to figure out whether or not they want to sell.  Once they figure that out, then they have to begin to determine a sale price.

So, we are currently waiting to hear from those landowners.  We have received about 35% of our Back40 commitments as of now.  Thanks for how hard you are working to fulfill your Back40 commitments!  Every one of those will help us get closer to purchasing land.

Facilities Update

We are currently running into some space issues at the north campus.  On this weekend – 3rd weekend in May last year, we began having two morning gatherings in addition to the Sunday evening gathering.  Our attendance was a little bit “spotty” through the summer because of family vacations and college students being gone.  However, we have had a steady increase in attendance throughout the Fall of 2008 and Winter/Spring of 2009 at the morning worship gatherings. We are using the overflow parking each week now at 11:00. We are looking at a few options.  One would be to start a third morning worship gathering at the north campus.  The difficulty here is that we would be starting that new gathering at an hour where unchurched and dechurched families don’t typically attend church like 8:30 am. 

Another option would be to investigate leasing some space at a different location and running a split campus schedule.  A large number of folks who come to LifePoint drive a significant distance (15 min or more) north to get to the north campus on Sunday mornings.  So, what could make a lot of sense for us would be to lease some space for the next few years in Lewis Center.  This would allow us more flexibility to grow.  We could have worship gatherings on Sunday mornings at multiple campuses…one earlier at one campus and one later at the other campus.  We are currently looking at the costs involved to take a step like that.  We have built into our budget for this year a monthly payment amount for a lease space/mortgage as a contingency.  Feel free to email me at dean@lifepointcolumbus.com if you have any questions. So, that’s the update for now and I will do my best to keep you aware of any changes!

Thanks for your passion for God,
Dean