Raising faith to the rafters
By Pam Reinig
With the help of a crew from a mission-minded church in west central Indiana, the members of a small parish in Volga are breathing new life into an abandoned school gym.
Calvary Bible Church is converting the gym into a community center for the residents of Volga and the surrounding area. An Iowa couple that changed their mind about renovating the mammoth structure after purchasing it deeded the building to the church. A dozen members of Liberty Chapel near Crawfordsville, Ind., have aided the efforts of the Volga congregation. The crew stayed for a week; teams worked around the clock to get the job finished.
The gym of the former school is a massive, Quonset-style structure with an impressive, arched roofline and comparatively short vertical sidewalls. Exterior work involved re-roofing the building by affixing dozens of sheets of plywood over existing shingles and then covering the plywood with new roofing materials. The job was especially challenging given last week's extreme heat and humidity.
"We had day crews and night crews," explained Jeremy Sarver, pastor at Calvary Bible Church. "The night crews worked with hats and headlamps that helped them see what they were doing."
Partners in the exterior work included Strawberry Point Lumber, who, according to Sarver, saved the church several thousands of dollars in supplies, and Osmundson Construction, who provided workers and the equipment needed to hoist them along the curved shoulders of the roofline.
Work inside the building was no less daunting. Every inch of the interior - more than 8,000 square feet, according to Sarver' was scrubbed and much of it painted. A door leading into the attached, four-story schoolhouse was walled over. A former equipment closet was converted into a bathroom and the stage area behind the gym was readied for meeting space.
This was not the first project done in Volga by the missionary team from Indiana, though it was the most ambitious. The two parishes are part of Village Mission Churches, an organization that supports "the forgotten mission field of North America" by undertaking collaborative projects. There are strong family ties as well: Pastor Allen Sparks of Liberty Chapel is Sarver's father-in-law. In previous visits, crews painted the front of a veterinarian office, built a gazebo for the community, placed park benches along the town's main street and installed a bathroom on the lower level of the Sarver home. The latter project was completed the year Sarver's wife, Mindi, was pregnant with their now-toddler twins.
Plans for the finished building are wide-ranging. Sarver said his church would hold its annual fall festival there. In the past, the October event has been a victim of the vagaries of fall weather. Youth groups will meet there as well, he added. A young couple from the church is eager to share their enjoyment of volleyball and several seniors have talked about using the space to walk.
"For us, this is about serving the community," said Sarver. "How do we do that? Where do we fit in?"
Sarver had hoped to have a church service in the newly spruced gym before the Indiana team left. His plan was overly ambitious, he said, given the scope of the project.
"But the doors will be open soon, real soon," he added.
Posted on July 21, 2010
