FAQs
Who can I talk to if I have questions regarding the sale of the Community Center?
Pastor Jonathan and members of Church Council will be available in the lobby café between services on Sunday, August 7th and August 14th. Additionally, you can call the church office to speak with Pastor Jonathan or email him at [email protected]. You can email our Council Chair, Erin Ducat, at [email protected], and our Vice Chair, Jeremy Swaw, at [email protected].

What renovations are we considering at the main campus?
Currently, both our main campus and Community Center are underutilized. First, the architects performed a space optimization analysis to explore whether we had room at one campus for the ministries that we have today. The main campus does indeed have adequate space. Second, the architects, who have experience working with churches, schools, and childcare centers according to required building codes for each, met with key representatives from each of our ministries (school, youth ministry, childcare, church, and music) to ask not only what was needed for each, but also what would help to strengthen each ministry. Current considerations are for new spaces for youth ministry and childcare and lightly renovated spaces for the school, church gathering spaces, and lobby. This is all still in a preliminary stage, and we are most conscientious about cost. We look forward to presenting plans for renovation in the next 1-2 months.

How will this impact our mortgage?
We currently have one mortgage with a lien against both properties. Itasca Bank has assured us that they will release the lien on 233 Maple and the lien on 405 Rush itself is sufficient to retain the current mortgage and its length.

What does all this have to do with growing lifelong disciples?
First, we need to be realistic from a financial standpoint. While our members continue to be generous in ways that are inspiring and humbling, we are also sitting on the other side of a pandemic. Trinity is not the size of the church that it once was many years ago, and neither are we the size of the church we were before the pandemic. We need to be good stewards and live within our means. We also want to set ourselves up for a fiscally viable future in the short term and the long term. Doing so helps not only to strengthen the ministries we have now, but opens more opportunities for ministry that we are not yet involved in. Parting with the Community Center and investing in a refreshed main campus sets us up for a fiscally stable future where ministry can thrive. Second, as we want to grow lifelong disciples, we want our ministries working together so that people continue to flow from one ministry to the next through all stages of life, and young and old gather and grow together. This is encouraged when ministries operate under one roof and people can go from preschool to school to Sunday school to youth to Bible studies to service and missions to worship and so on. Ministries working together grow lifelong disciples.

Don’t we lose a presence in the community if we sell the Community Center?
Perhaps. It is true that, for example, a high school student may feel more comfortable coming to a place like the Community Center before they would feel comfortable stepping foot into a church. If that has happened and people have encountered Jesus because of that, praise God! The Community Center and the ministry that the Spirit performed there was not a mistake. It is something to be celebrated! But it is also true that our main campus has a long history of being used by the community, too. Every year, even since the pandemic, many people who don’t know Jesus, from different backgrounds, denominations, and even religions have come to our campus for different events. That’s a heritage to be proud of. We want our church to be a community center! Additionally, when someone is uncomfortable entering a church, the goal is not to get them comfortable coming inside a specific building. Do we want everyone to feel comfortable coming to worship someday? Of course, that’s where we encounter Jesus! But Romans 10:14-15 says, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’” We need to be a church that doesn’t expect the unbelieving and uncomfortable to come to us, but a church that brings the good news to them. We need to be a church with beautiful feet. It’s not just about having a building people will come to but being a community of people who are comfortable bringing the Gospel to the uncomfortable. That is more important—and more effective—than a building. We want to see the Gospel alive in our families, in our church, and in our community.