First United Methodist Church breaks ground on new church in DeKalb

Members of the congregation held a groundbreaking ceremony this past weekend.

DeKALB – The leadership at First United Methodist Church in DeKalb says that breaking ground on a new church after almost 20 years of planning, location searching, architectural drawings and fundraising has been a testament to the congregation’s faith and generosity.

Church leaders hosted a groundbreaking ceremony July 24 to celebrate the start of construction with city officials, congregants and members of the public.

The new building has a projected $4.8 million price tag, project leaders said.

The Rev. Senior Pastor Jonathan Crail said the congregation is excited about the plan to build a new church building on North Annie Glidden Road off Rosenow Way.

“We feel like we’re breaking new ground in opportunities for mission and ministry for our congregation,” Crail said. “This is not just putting together a new facility for the church, but it’s really a new opportunity to engage with the community, to be in a neighborhood that is in the process of revitalization. So, it’s not just about us and our congregation having a place to worship and do our activities, it’s really about how can we be a blessing to DeKalb and the wider world.”

At 12,366-square-feet spanning more than 15 acres, the new church building will have a sanctuary capable of seating 240 people and another 130 in the overflow into the Narthex.

John Ward, co-chairman for the church’s building coordinating team, said the new church building will be situated on one level and easily accessible by all.

The congregation has a home at its current location at 317 N. Fourth Street where it’s been since 1909, but church leaders had a building study conducted nearly 20 years ago, only to determine that they would prefer a new location.

Crail said study findings showed some structural and longterm maintenance issues in the Fourth Street building. That compounded with a desire to downsize led to the new location.

“As we know with individual families as you grow older, you need to downsize,” Crail said. “The reality is our congregation is not as large as it was 30 or 40 years ago. The current structure we have is really too big. There’s a lot of hallways, stairways and empty space that’s really not well used and yet we still have to pay for all of the utilities and upkeep of those spaces that are not easily used.”

Crail said that it will be much more cost-effective to build a new church.

Plans to construct the new place of worship in the city’s Annie Glidden North neighborhood will help ensure that the church can carry out its mission for years to come.

First United Methodist Church has a long history of worship and outreach to the DeKalb community.

Sherry Uhrich, co-chairman for the church’s building coordinating team, said the new location is a win-win for the community and church alike.

“Moving to the area we’re moving is going to help us to build some of our outreach,” Uhrich said. “I actually also am the youth missions coordinator, and I take junior high/high school kids to do mission work every year. So, we’re hoping to help do some outreach within the Edens Gardens area and the area around the high school to maybe bring some more kids into our youth group and do some of those activities and help us with missions and outreach as well.”

But Uhrich said there was a point in time where members of the congregation didn’t financially think the new building could be a reality. At the same time, she said members of the church were opposed to turning to a mortgage to finance the build.

“It was really an all or nothing,” she said. “If we wouldn’t have raised the funds, we would’ve had to delay the build until we could get those additional funds because everybody pretty much said, ‘nope, no mortgage.’ It’s something that we’re really proud of that we’re going to be able to do this at this point in time and pay cash for the build. We had purchased the 15 acres a couple years ago, so that was already done and paid for. So, the land was there for us available for us when we were ready to begin the build.”

Plans for the new building had underwent some revisions to bring the project costs in line with the church’s budget.

With the state of the economy, church leaders had to be mindful of supply shortages when planning for the church’s construction, which Crail said were addressed over several weeks by picking a contractor to begin the work of adjusting the plans and applying cost-cutting measures.

“That brought down the cost of the project, and then we went back to some of our primary givers, and said, ‘Here are the numbers, and here’s what we have, and here’s the gap.’ ” Crail said. “Amazingly, even though I had thought we had tapped out our resources in our first campaign, again, people really stepped up and said, ‘We want to make this happen. We’ll come up with the money and cover that gap.’ So, we were just amazed by their generosity, by the generosity of the whole congregation.”

Ward said the groundbreaking ceremony ultimately proved to be a positive experience.

“In a crazy day in time in our history with all these things going on in our world – politically economically, and wars and everything else taking place – we [were] able to move forward and build ourselves a new church,” Ward said.

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