First United Methodist Church, Taylorville, IL Consecration Service

Consecration Service May 21, 2023

Bob – (Church Member) Our 100 year old church maintains its identity in history, while adding and updating many safety and security features. Our aging building had many challenges but by joining the new facility with the old, we were able to address many shortcomings with entries, exists, ramps, and a lift, providing accessibility, and safety for everyone. And now all entrances and exits to all levels of our church are vastly improved. We intended to create a facility with significant flexibility to better serve our congregation and also our entire community. We will be able to welcome large and small groups as well as large and small meeting rooms, as well as a large multi-purpose area. We can entertain groups, of all ages, with active games and sports. We can host area clubs and interest groups, we can feed large gatherings and hold big meetings with state of the art video, sound and WIFI. What we did is, we took the old part of the church and we did this (see photos). We did not change the sanctuary and the main floor remained, essentially as is. We also improved the safety of the old building with additional fire protection as well as better ingress and egress. In the old building, we added a new Welcoming Center to facilitate conversation and informal gatherings. We created a secure nursery, complete with modern facilities and technology and we added and improved on the 2nd floor of our old building, with meeting rooms, to include a choir room, a ministry room, offices and more. That's what we did in remodeling the old building, but again we tried to maintain our history.

The new building, as we're standing in, is a 12,400 s. f. facility. We've got a new, ground-level entrance on Market Street; which will allow a drive thru, drop off and pick up; accommodating all levels of physical ability. The all-purpose area that we're sitting in is about 5,000 s.f. and it can serve about 240 people. When we get the floor striped and everything, it will allow half-court basketball, pickle ball, Bad mitten, volleyball and more for games and activities. As you can see, our state of the art, audio and video, will allow video and streaming content when appropriate. Our portable stage, which we don't have yet, we'll be able to roll in and out and from there we'll be able to have speakers and presentations of awards and more.

The large and modern kitchen, capable of serving large groups, you need to go in and look at it, its quite impressive. We've got modern, ADA compliant restrooms. We've got a lift over there to get up to the upper level. We have 7 new classrooms and meetings rooms of various sizes equipped with assorted technology to serve both the church and the community. And finally, we have ramps going into the old and new building that make this accessible to the 1st floor, 2nd floor, the new building and old building; so we've got a lot of flexibility that we've never had before.

Which brings me to the real point! This article was written to try to get people to come to our open house, 2 weeks from today (June 4, 2023). And I think it is pretty important that we get in the loop and start inviting our neighbors, our friends and our family members to come and look at this facility. Again, as Reverend Brad has said, 'Let's seize the day and what's next?' Well, if we get people in, we know we have only one chance to have that positive, first impression. So, let's get these people in here. They can look at our facility and let's make them feel warm and welcome. With that, I hope that we will live up to this particular byline we use over and over, it says, 'We hope to ENERGIZE, EXCITE, AND UNITE all who enter our doors.' Let's try to live up to that!

Jim Brubaker at Consecration Service, May 21, 2023

“I've just got to say something about these gentlemen over her. First of all, Dennis Schuette, our architect. Dennis and I worked together when I was on the Building and Planning commission Montgomery County and he was the architect for Hurst Rosche engineers out of Hillsboro, Illinois and at that time he did a plan review of a complex that we were wanting to do in that county and so that's how I became familiar with Dennis. In the 30 years that I've dabbled in architecture, my work required an architecture stamp, and I didn't have that...so Dennis would check to make sure all my drawings were done accurately, and everything was correct and afterwards I'd make any corrections I needed to make. So, I've known Dennis for a long time so when I talk about Dennis, I also knew Dennis by personality, and when I say that I say when you get an archtectect for a job, usually they'll listen to you when you get together and go over the program and they will go so far and then they'll say, “this is it”. This gentleman didn't do that. Anything that we asked for to be put in the original concept, he put into the plans. We know with the pricing that occurred during Covid, that we had to go back and redo some things but when you see his concept, I think we did it pretty well so Dennis, for all your work, for all your associates, Bob Bryant and Gary Hale, Thank You!

Johnco Construction, we had these guys come and meet with us. It didn't register that this was the Bob Berns that I'd worked with as a teacher at Litchfield school district. We had a relationship and they are a great, great construction company. I can tell you that. Scott Saunder, please stand! I just want to tell you that Jeff and I were working with Scott and were getting into these money things and prices were all over the board and at one time we even had concrete deeper than asphalt. I mean, just crazy stuff going on, and so we talked it over and say, can we do this and this and can we do that and he'd say, 'We can do that', 'We can do that'. And so often, he would give us direction. I know Dennis said they're the best construction team he's ever worked with on the job.

You can see a list of names over here on board, the sub-contractors that Johnco had and among those was Bodine Electric. Bodine is one example, we did a lot of things, and I don't know another building with the time involved. It's a building that's extremely well made, and a building I think we're going to find out in a year that its going to be pretty economically heating and cooled. I mentioned Bodine, I really hated to cover up the electrical work. The impeccable work. The ceiling tile comes in and the contractors that worked on this building did impeccable work. I just want you to know that. The union workers, I just want to commend all these people. Hopefully we can commend all these people on the 4th when we have a walk thru. I just want you to commend them. They are artists, they do things absolutely amazing and in the whole concept, they did an outstanding job. So to Dennis today and the whole group from the whole church family, we want to say Thank You.”

Pastor Brad - “Bless O Lord those who have made this facility possible. Bless those who have prepared food in the back, and we ask that you bless the food itself that it might edify and energize our bodies, that we might continue to be in your service. We just give you thanks for this glorious day. In Jesus' name, Amen.”

Pastor Becky - “Thank you for being here!”