We recently got this letter in the mail at our office and thought it was too good not to share with more than just our team! It’s amazing what happens when we follow God’s plans for our finances and decide to give first, save second, and live on the rest.
Click here to give to the Athens, I Love You project now.
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You may not have known, but the middle schoolers and high schoolers at Athens Church are participating in Athens, I Love You as well. And as a part of their current Athens, I Love You series (listen to audio of the messages here), director of student ministries Charles Ficken and LDP-staffer Samer Massad took our students inside the new building via video for a little tour. Take a look at this clip that aired last week in InsideOut and Xtreme!
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One of the things that gets me most excited about our new building is just how much it’s going to reflect this incredible city in which we live. Take for instance this bench that will be featured outside our new home, the first of a few benches we’ll feature that are made of recycled bike parts from around the Classic City.
Mike Ely is the local artist who’s been working on these for us. Mike is the co-manager of the BikeAthens Bike Recycle Project, a non-profit organization that refurbishes approximately 100 bikes a year for recipients like the Athens Area Homeless Shelter, the Athens-Clarke County Drug Rehabilitation Program, students at Fowler Drive Elementary School, and more.
If you’ve ever seen this bike rack between the theater and the Foundry St Building at the Classic Center, Mike built it too! And he’s putting together a pretty nifty bike rack for us as well.
We’re so excited to partner with local creatives like Mike to help give our space that “Athens” feel we love so much. Athens, I love you!
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Since we last updated you, about 90% of the framing has been completed
(here’s a look down the Waumba hall):
We also put in all the exterior windows for the classrooms:
Today begins drywall. Here’s the main auditorium:
More pictures in the coming weeks! Spread the word!
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Over the coming weeks on the blog, we want to highlight a few of the companies who are helping us construct our future home. Seeing as we’re definitely rookies at building a building, we’ve hired some of the best the nation has to offer to do their thing so we can do ours, which is creating relevant environments for the unchurched people in our city.
Running point on the whole project is Cogun Church Construction, based out of Ohio. Cogun is a great reflection of all the companies working on our new facility in the sense that not only are they really gifted at what they do, but they’re also really passionate about seeing the local church thrive in communities like ours.
Cogun was started over 40 years ago to assist churches with the challenges and opportunities of expansion. They partner with independent architectural firms (in our case, the South Carolina based Neal-Prince firm) to design and build church facilities that are both breathtaking and affordable. To date, Cogun has successfully designed and built over 600 projects in 33 states. It’s these guys that are on site day in and day out actually making this thing happen!
One Cogun employee we especially love working with is Atlanta’s Richard Chancy. Richard, an attender at Browns Bridge Community Church, the North Point campus in Cumming, has been walking with us throughout the course of our entire project, and posted some new pictures of our project on his blog just last week.
If you visit Cogun’s website you can see pictures and 3D animations from current and past projects and much more. Check em out and get excited. This building’s coming fast!
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The Cogun construction team has brought great holiday cheer to the people of Athens, as here we are a week before Christmas and the metal stud work/framing for a majority of the building is complete!
Here is the entrance to UpStreet and looking down the main UpStreet hallway:
This shot is standing in what will be student ministry hang-out space, looking through the entrance into our student ministry large group room:
This is one of the entrances to our main auditorium:
And here is a Waumba Land classroom (yes, they’ve already cut holes for the windows!)
How exciting to see the thing which we’ve sacrificed for and given to beginning to take shape!
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If you ever wondered why we do what we do or why we’re investing so much in our new facility opportunity, take the next 8 minutes to celebrate all that God is doing in Mike and Nicole’s life and in the city of Athens. Wow!!
Mike and Nicole Rubio’s Baptism from Athens Church on Vimeo.
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Workers are at the building before the sun rises and well after it sets.
Here are some pictures of the progress!
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Thanksgiving weekend got us thinking … “what are you thankful for in Athens?”
Leave a comment and let us know!
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One of my favorite things about this new project of ours is the picture it paints for our community. This part of town across from the mall used to be the center of everything in Athens. The building we’re renovating used to be a Walmart before it was a Steve & Barry’s and there was a very successful Uptons department store nextdoor as well, and if you can remember back that far you know this was the epicenter of the town. Things are different here in November 2010, when more cracks then people grace this parking lot in a given week, but not for long. We dream about this community becoming vibrant and alive again!
We look at our lives and realize just how broken we were before we met Jesus. We battled addictions, we made poor decisions, we were a mess! But God, in His mercy, came into our lives and cleaned us up. He took what was dead, and actually made us alive again! It’s the kind of restoration that makes Extreme Home Makeover look like child’s play. God is in the business of restoring.
So that’s why I get so excited when I stare at a rundown building in a beat-up parking lot. I see myself in the cracks and the wear and tear, and I know when this renovation is all said and done, we will have seen an incredible picture of restoration- a building and a slice of town that were abandoned, filled with life again! And you get to be a part of it. When you give to this project, you’re revitalizing a city. When you sacrifice for this building, you’re providing jobs to the men in our community who’ll be working to build it. When your gifts go above and beyond in this season, you are single handedly pitching a shovel in the spiritual restoration of every husband, wife, daughter, and son who “try” church for the first time in this new building. Thank you for helping us lead the people of Athens into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ!
Visit Cogun who we’ve hired to help build the future home of Athens Church.
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