And the walls came a-tumb-a-lin' down

Well, today was the big day. The day that our church home of 102 years came down. It was a day of mixed emotions for many. While it was sad to see the building go, we knew it was time, and now we can start building for another set of memories.

I arrived right at around 8 this morning, and a small crowd had begun to gather. We originally set up in front of the Christian Family Life Center, but once I saw that they were beginning from the back, I moved around for a better view. As soon as the demolition began, the throng quickly moved around to the back as well. The debris of the collapsing education building was used to fill in the basement. The main concern with the old education building was keeping it from falling onto the new education building. Fortunately, the only casualty was one of the windows.

Before too long, the machines had made their way through the old education building and began tearing into the sanctuary. This process took longer, as they had to move more debris out of the way. They left the front facade of the building up when they took a lunch break. I left to get lunch as well, and when I got back, they were tearing down the front of the building. The main concern was getting out the cornerstone, which is supposed to have some sort of time capsule in it. They managed to successfully remove the cornerstone, but getting into it proved trickier. In fact, we decided to hold off until we contacted the experts on how to best proceed. There will be a ceremony at a later date for the opening.

I took over a couple hundred pictures, and I know many other people did as well. However, I only have a few up right now. I will try to get more up later.

Tearing into the old education building

Only the sanctuary remains

Entering the sanctuary

The roof of the chruch collapses in

Anyway, all morning, as I reflected on my own memories of the building and my times in there, one of our choir anthems kept playing in my head. It's called "At the Cross," and I'll leave you with some of the words from that anthem.

But drops of tears can ne'er repay

The debt of love I owe.

Here, Lord, I give myself away;

'Tis all that I can do.

At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,

And the burden of my heart rolled away;

It was there by faith I received my sight,

And now I am happy all the day.

-Isaac Watts and Ralph E. Hudson

Getting a little less colorful...

Greetings! As I promised, I have some pictures of the church without the stained glass windows. In case you are wondering, they have been removed and will be restored before being placed in our new church building. When I got up to the church on Tuesday, the last of the windows had been loaded up into the truck. I walked in and took some pictures. As I said last time, the scene reminded me of tornado damage. That's kind of ironic, considering the windows survived when a tornado actually did hit the church in the 1940's. However, the original roof did not, and that's when the current roof was built. That was also when the current front entrance to the church was built. Before, the entrances were on the corners, but during the remodel, rooms were built on the corners and the entrance was put in the front. So originally, the front window extended down like the two on the sides. No one seems to know what happened to the rest of the original window on the front. My theory is that that window did not survive the tornado, and that was one reason they decided to put a door there. However, I could be completely wrong.

Anyway, here are the pics:

As you can see in those last couple of pics, the chandelier was still up on Tuesday. When I was up at the church for choir practice on Wednesday, the chandelier was gone. It is also being saved to be reused. I'm not certain, but I believe the story I was told about that chandelier was that it was first in a movie house that was built on the same location the church is before the church was there. Here is a pic with the chandelier gone:

On a side note, I was up at the church tonight helping with the Youth's flamingo flocking. While we were up there, we noticed some random people hanging out in the church. It was fairly obvious that they did not belong there, and it seemed kind of weird. I don't think they can tear up anything too much worse than what we already have. Anyway, since the church is coming down in just a couple of days, it seems kind of moot. (I'm not saying it doesn't bother me, though, that people are trespassing on the church property.) I will try to get more pics up when the demolition starts.

Adjusting to change

Sunday was our first worship service in our new temporary home in the Christian Family Life Center. Despite the change of setting, the service went on like normal. In some ways, the service acknowledged the change our church is facing. Greg gave a sermon entitled "Beginning Again, Again," based on Jacob wrestling with the angel and being given the name of Israel. Kim did a children's sermon with a foil boat showing how if we need to be willing to accept change (like being reshaped from a flat piece of foil into a boat) in order to stay afloat. The choir sang the anthem "The Church's One Foundation," with the message speaking as a reminder that no matter where we worship, our foundation is always Jesus. On the other hand, other things happened with no correlation to the building whatsoever. The kids did a couple songs from VBS. We had communion like the first Sunday of any month. I guess the fact that we had no communion rail made that one of the bigger adjustments.

Anyway, I went by the church this afternoon, and the stained glass windows had just been taken out. Standing inside the building, I thought the place reminded me of pictures of tornado damage. I will try to get pictures up of the windowless church in the next couple of days, but for now here are a few more pics from the move last week.

The music library, completely cleaned out:

The balcony, with no carpet and pews. Getting those pews down was quite a challenge.

The entryway to the old education building. The right side of the frame has been sawed out so that we had more room to get pews out.

On Friday, the red curtain was removed from behind the choir loft. We also attempted to remove the large piece of wood paneling, but it proved to be fairly challenging. As of today, it is still there.


The stairs being removed from the back of the church. When I left on Friday, only the lower portion had been removed, but by Sunday the spiral section was also gone. I heard that they were sold to another local church.

Out with the old...

It has been a busy week. Bible School was a great success. We had choir practice Wednesday in our new temporary choir loft. Then on Thursday and Friday afternoons, we had workdays to get anything out of the old church building that's not going down with the building.

It was quite interesting seeing the church building almost empty. Many of the pews had been removed already, and we had to load up a bunch onto trailers and take them into storage for the time being. Those that remain now are just waiting to be picked up by people. Much of the red carpet has been removed. When I arrived on Thursday, the cross had already been removed from behind the choir loft, and the organ was in the process of being removed.

The nice thing about taking stuff out of a building that's coming down is you don't have to worry about tearing up the building. As we removed pews from the balcony, we weren't too concerned with bumping the ceiling. The only thing that we knew we couldn't mess up was the stained glass window by the stairs. When we needed to get some pews out of the old education building in the back, we even sawed out a door frame in order to get more room to move pews.

Here are a few pics showing some of the work:

Removing the organ speakers

Part of the door frame had to be taken out to get the organ out. You can see some of the original brickwork of the building underneath.

The choir loft with the Clavinova and organ removed. The chairs have also been detached from the floor.

The cross has been removed from the panel behind the choir loft.


A view of the sanctuary. Many pews have been removed, and so has some of the carpet.

More pics to follow.

A change in flight plans...

Well, today was the first day of our 2010 bible school, Galactic Blast, and it was, well, a blast. However, it also was one of the first of many things we have had to modify because of our building project.

You see, we usually alternate summers hosting bible school with First Christian Church, and this would have been our year to host. In fact, when plans were first being made earlier this year, we were still planning on hosting at First United Methodist. Then, once the timeframe for construction fell in place, it became apparent that we would be unable to host bible school, so we had to go with a consecutive year at First Christian.

In fact, it was due to this change that I first heard that our project was happening so soon. When the April newsletter came out, it had an item about bible school being at First Christian. At first, I thought that maybe it was a misprint or something left in from an announcement from last year. But when I asked, I was told that we would indeed be at First Christian and it was due to the construction time frame, which had us moving out in the middle of May. (It basically came down to the legalities involved with the bid process. Once we accepted a bid, the time frame fell in place.)

For a while, it looked like our change of venue might not have been necessary, as by the beginning of May we were looking to June 13 being our last Sunday in the current building. However, when they said they were starting work that week, that meant actual demolition. Therefore, we had to already have the windows out at that point, meaning we needed to be moving stuff out before that. This entire process is what led to last Sunday being our last day in the building.

Anyway, that's a long story to explain why I'm singing and dancing at First Christian this week. Honestly, it's not necessarily a bad thing. The multimedia setup there makes leading the songs much easier. (They have screens on both the front and back walls, meaning I can watch the video while leading. One of the benefits of our new sanctuary is that we will have a similar setup.) However, part of me was really looking forward to having one last bible school in our old sanctuary. My first time to ever lead bible school music was two years ago in that sanctuary, and now it will be my only time. Perhaps it will be that those memories are then a little more special for that reason. Regardless, I will have fun leading the rest of this week at First Christian, and hopefully by this time next year, I will be leading music in our brand new church building at First United Methodist.

Until next time, remember, our God is incredible. Praise God!