Sunday, September 2, 2012

How to build a church


The article below was published in the local newspaper The Flume on Friday morning this past week.  News travels fast in a small community like Bailey, and our plans to re-open the country store is big news.  Below is an excerpt from the front page article:
 

Posted: Friday, August 31, 2012 2:27 pm
The Journey Community Church has leased the Bailey Country Store building at 149 Main St. in Bailey and plans to open a general store and small coffee shop as soon as some renovations are completed. Jim Myers, senior pastor for the Bailey campus of the Conifer-based church, said there will also be a small food bank that will operate out of the building and some offices upstairs, but there are no plans to hold any church services in the building. The Bailey campus consists of just a small group of about 20 to 25 people in Bailey, said Myers, and they will be working as the launch team getting the store ready. The Bailey campus is an extension of the church that meets in Conifer, he said. The congregation in Conifer is made up of around 800 members.  Myers could not give a date of when the store and coffee shop will be open.  “We’re still figuring out what needs to be done,” he said.
All the work will be done by volunteers. There will need to be some painting done as well as some work on the floor and rebuilding the sign; those are just some of the main things that will need to be done before the store can open. There are other smaller projects that can be done over time, he said, but they don’t have to be done in order to open.
He declined to give the details of the lease agreement.
Lynn Griffin, who owns the building with her husband, Dennis Griffin ... purchased the building in August 2010; it was vacant when they purchased it, she said. She did not know how long it had been vacant prior to that.  According to the Nov. 26, 2010, Flume, Denver-based American National Bank began foreclosure proceedings on the building in late 2008. At that time, the building was 130 years old, and it was owned by Eric and Barbara Keto, who bought the building in 2005. It housed the Bailey Country Store, which was operated by Eric Keto...  They were hoping that someone would come in and put a grocery store back in the building, said Lynne Griffin earlier this week. Their goal was to bring businesses back to Bailey, to give people places to have jobs and grow the community.
“I just think they’re a really hard-working group of people,” Griffin said. “We’re happy to have them as a tenant.”
Employees in the store will be volunteers, said Myers. Profits from the store will be used for expanding the church ministry as well as helping the community.
Myers said his heart is in Bailey because it was where he and his wife, Daphne Myers, first moved when they came to Colorado three years ago.
“The store and the coffee shop [are] a way of getting to be part of this town,” he said.
He wants the store to be somewhere that people will be able to grab the things they need and not have to go down the hill to metro Denver. He also wants it to be a place where the youth in Bailey will have a place to hang out.
“We love Bailey and can’t wait to get this up and running,” Myers said. “The sooner the better.”
He’s excited about all the buzz in the community about the store starting up again.

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