I once joked that maybe Maranatha’s tagline should be “Church on the move!” since it has had so many locations in its short existence. And, true to form, our lease has run its course and God has us moving once again
We’ve talked about moving to another location, we’ve been packing moving boxes, and we’ve discussed possible locations in several meetings. But now it’s official … April 27 will be our last service on Cooley Drive and we’ll have our first service together at our new location May 4!
Cooley Drive has been Maranatha’s worship and ministry center for about 2 years now but we’ve been renting on a month-to-month basis … always acknowledging the fact that at any given time a prospective tenant could come along willing to pay market value for the space. And that time has finally come. We were, of course, given the opportunity to match the rent offer … but we would have had to rent the entire floor of the building as well. So our time at this space is coming to an end.
The hardest part of our search since being told we’d need to move soon, has been trying to find space that we can both afford and effectively use. We have been growing and needing more space anyway, but we are still a small congregation. After an exhaustive search that included schools, community centers, theaters, retail storefronts, office suites, 30 other churches, and even empty restaurants … the leadership team brought two options to the congregation. Of those two, we voted to meet at another church on Saturdays and Tuesday evenings (to accommodate our current worship, AWANA, and youth meeting times) and have the leadership team look into finding additional office/storage space as needed.
So …
April 27 will be our last worship service at 1430 E. Cooley Drive. The message that morning (“For Such a Time As This”) will be centered around the Book of Esther. We have invited our landlords to join us as we officially recognize them for blessing us these last couple years with greatly reduced rent, and we will host a final Cooley Drive fellowship meal together.
May 4 will be our first worship service, meeting at Heritage Bible Church (851 S. Mt. Vernon Ave.) just a few short blocks away from where we meet now. We will need to adjust to more limited access than we’ve been used to, but the church also has several amenities we had gotten used to missing the last couple of years … little things like a separate sanctuary, handicapped access, running water in the kitchen, and bathrooms actually inside the church (imagine that!)
This is proving to be an exciting season for us at Maranatha … a time of growth and increased ministry opportunity. I hope you will join us for either or both services as we thank God for His faithfulness to date and His continued guidance and providence into the future!
Pastor George