Recession thwarts financing, so church shares land

Cambridge Church members must wait a little longer for a new building, but they are not waiting to share the land where their church someday will stand.

The church, which was founded 14 years ago, never has known a permanent home. Worship services are held at Blue Valley Middle School, and a 16-acre tract of ground next door to the school has been acquired for a church building.

If all had gone according to plans and dreams, the congregation of just over 200 members would have celebrated a ground breaking for a church by now. But the recession changed all that.

“We had a building campaign in 2008, when the whole economic thing happened. We thought we were set, but the banks decided they didn’t want to loan that much money,” said the Rev. Jay Fowler, who held the church’s first services in 1996 at the former Martin City Melodrama Theater building at 135th Street and Holmes Road. “We kind of hanged our heads and were down about (the financing), but then we decided God gave us this property so let’s use it to serve the public.”

The selected manner of use is a temporary park.

“It’s 16 acres in a really neat neighborhood in an area that we want to reach anyway, so it made sense,” Fowler said.

The church is installing some amenities on the 163rd Terrace and Roe Avenue site, which will be formally dedicated for public use with a festival on June 19.

The festival, called Summer Breeze, will include a concert featuring a band by the same name.

Festivities will run from 4 to 8 p.m., and the concert begins at 6 p.m. Not so coincidentally, the lead singer of the soft-rock band is the church’s worship leader, Chris Sieggen.

Concessions will be sold, and visitors can try out the available amenities at no charge. The site includes a nine-hole disc golf course featuring professional-level baskets, soccer and football practice fields, a playground area, and a prayer garden. The church will be giving away discs to festival-goers so they can try out the course.

Fowler said the area also will include a walking and biking trail, but it might not be completed for the opening.

“Everything will be free to use, although we might need to charge for use of the practice fields (after the grand opening) in order to cover our costs of keeping them mowed and maintained,” Fowler said.

It probably will be another two to three years before the church gains financing for the new building, Fowler said. Until that day comes and construction gets under way, the church plans to keep the land available for public use.

When asked if the church had any concerns about legal liabilities in opening the land for public use, Fowler acknowledged that the topic came up.

“Any time you put yourself out there, there’s a bit of risk. But churches are so risk-averse sometimes that they don’t get the job done of serving the community as the Lord wants you to do it,” Fowler said. “We thought about the liabilities and decided it was worth the risk. If what we do is well-received, it will have been worth it.”

Contact Loren Stanton at 385-6068 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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