Every year in Dream House season I tend to indulge myself. Not in
imagining what i would be like to win the house – I have never seen
a dream house I would actually want to live in, in the off chance I
did win one I would rather sell it and find uses for the money. My
indulging comes more when I hear the amount of the 50/50 drawn and
start to think what I might do with that sort of money (purely
theoretical since it is pretty much impossible to win when you never
buy a ticket).
My thinking along that line often starts with looking around the
house and realizing all the things that should or could be done
inside and outside. That gets a little overwhelming pretty quickly.
So then I think about the church and what we might do if we won a
large sum of money.
That list depends on the amounts I choose to dream about. With a few
million I dream about finding a partner and embarking on a major
redevelopment. With a few hundred thousand I dream of what we might
do with our current building both in terms of changes to the building
and programs we could co-sponsor (all my dreams eventually get to
finding community partners to work with).
In both sets of dreaming I tend to set priorities. At home it might
be a new roof, or a redone kitchen, or a driveway that is not
terribly cracked and shifted. At the church it might include redoing
the flooring in the basement, or upgrading to all LED lighting, or
finding a solution to the water under the building that causes it to
shift so much. But I know what I would want us to do first.
One
of my dreams is to redo the audio-visual
capacity of our sanctuary. The organ needs work (new speakers at the
least). Having the projector hung from the ceiling would both allow
us to get a brighter, larger unit which will show pictures better but
also mean that those of us who walk along the chancel won’t blind
ourselves every time we walk past. Currently only one of our speakers
is working (that has been true for about 4 years now) and playing a
video is always a roll of the dice as far as audio goes.
My
dreams include new speakers (I see four in the sanctuary space to
balance out the sound). And a new sound board so we can have more
options for microphones or instruments. And a booth at the back where
the sound could be controlled along with where the Power Point
would be operated from. And
new organ speakers in the short term – as the organ console is 40
years old a decision about whether to replace it will be needed
within the next generation.
My
dreams are expensive. I know of one congregation with a slightly
larger space than ours who
spent about
$100 000 on audio-visual redevelopment.
So we might do some picking and choosing. The first step would be to
have someone who knows about these things give us a list of options.
But I do think it is something we need to consider. Not only would it
enhance our life as a worshipping congregation, it would also enhance
our ability to host concerts or speakers or movies or other events in
the sanctuary. Ten years ago this congregation wrote in a Joint Needs
Assessment how the acoustics in the sanctuary made it a good site for
concerts. It was and is true. We could make it better (which would be
an offering to the community and
a possible revenue source).
Gord
No comments:
Post a Comment