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When Third Christian Church planted a Sunday School in Richmond’s Fairmount neighborhood in 1902, no one dreamed where Fairmount Christian Church would be today. In its century of existence, Fairmount moved from Fairmount Avenue to Mechanicsville Turnpike to Creighton Road. In each of those locales, God has been mightily at work through the Fairmount family. Innumerable lives have been changed. Millions of dollars have gone into mission work. Countless worship services have been held. Men and women have entered the ministry. Area ministries have been bolstered. Thousands of children, teens, and adults have been experienced the love of Christ and the truths of the Bible. What started with only a handful of families now has grown into a church family with 1,000 people in worship each week. Always with God in front – leading us forward – leading us onward.
Through the prayers of our church’s leaders and our entire congregation, it is clear that God is leading us forward again. As a congregation that is committed to growth, it is time to expand our church’s ministries and facilities to better meet the needs of our community. For some time now, the Fairmount Forward Team has presented to our church family a multi-phase expansion project that will, eventually, fill our current property to capacity with twice as many Sunday morning worshippers.
Phase 1 of that project involved several things. One was to build a multi-purpose meeting room that would help us better minister to our current congregation and new folks who were coming to us. What we now call Room 132 is a main staple of our church’s ministries – used almost daily in the life of our congregation. Phase 1 also included the widening of our driveway entrance, more parking, the addition of a turning lane on Creighton Road into our property, installation of a camera security system, the building of a covered entrance and additional storage space adjacent to our Family Life Center, and other smaller projects. Several of those are underway right now. The overall cost of Phase 1 is $1,540,000 - and we have paid for or have the money on hand to complete all these projects.
Phases 2 and 3 are even more aggressive: the construction of a new Worship Center and the addition of new Christian education space. God leads us onward to Phase 2. As we said with the construction of our current Family Life Center, each phase will create “more room for more people to hear more about Jesus”. A new Worship venue is only part of it. As proposed, this Phase will contain larger classrooms, an expanded nursery, an enhanced welcome center, and more casual gathering space for meetings and fellowship. But the primary focus will be Worship. Our gymnasium has served half of our congregation well for eight years. It is time to create a more permanent, spiritually-focused environment for all worshippers that are coming to Fairmount.
 Fairmount has a strong practice of traditional worship – and that won’t change. Every Sunday, 350 men, women, and children worship in our sanctuary that has served us well for 18 years and will continue to serve us into the future. Several years ago, as our sanctuary was regularly filled to capacity, our church leaders saw the wisdom in creating more space by adding a more contemporary worship service that would meet in the Family Life Center, and in 2003 we opened that service at the 9:30 hour. That service has witnessed our greatest growth. Simply stated, we need more room. With the past as our greatest indicator, we can project that within five years of opening a new Worship center, we could have as many as 1,000 worshippers in that venue alone. More people hearing more about Jesus.
But it’s not just about more space for worship. This new Worship Center will allow the majority of our church family and the community at large to gather in one place for singular functions: concerts, congregational meetings, prayer services, theatrical productions, simulcasts, and much, much more. The fellowship spaces that will surround the new Worship Center will create more room for making guests feel welcome, for sign-ups and displays, for impromptu meetings, and for enjoying coffee! It will be a place for the entire church family!
As we are a congregation committed to growth, we won’t just be growing our facilities. More classes bring more spiritual growth. More fellowship space leads to more relationships and prayer. More seats offer worship for more people. More people create opportunities for more ministries and potentially more staff who will help us meet the needs of a growing congregation.
Our campaign is entitled “Onward”. God is indeed calling us Onward – out of the comfort zone of our current existence into something that will change the landscape of God’s Kingdom in the Cold Harbor area of Mechanicsville – and ultimately our region and the world. We are reminded each time our church moves or expands that the more people we are touching with the Gospel here in Mechanicsville, the more people around the state, country, and world are being touched with the Gospel. It is as simple as that. The larger the family is at Fairmount, the larger impact we are having locally and globally.
Moving onward is going to take financial commitment from all of us. As we are only in the design phase right now, we do not have a firm cost for Phase 2 of the project. We are estimating it will cost between $5-7 million. We are going to start our Onward campaign with the goal of raising $3 million over three years. This will allow us to go full steam ahead with construction, with a hopeful grand opening in late 2014. Obviously, the ministries of the church will continue – and they will continue to grow in the mean time. We need your financial commitment to the Onward campaign to be above your normal giving to the operation of our church. |
