News from the Facilities Leadership Planning Team (FLPT)

Town Hall Meeting

On Sunday afternoon, April 13, over 60 members of the congregation gathered in the parish hall to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of our facilities and to express hopes and concerns about any future building/remodeling/renovation plans. While there were several newer members present, most people who attended were long-time members of the congregation.

To start the conversation, the FLPT posed a series of questions, including the following:

· What goes on here that is important to you?

· How does this space help or hinder that activity?

· When people drive by our building, what do they think?

· What is the best thing about this space?

· What is unique about our congregation and how does our building support (or not support) that unique identity?

· What about our facility drives people crazy?

Several themes emerged from the subsequent small-group discussions, including the following:

· We see ourselves as a welcoming congregation, but our space does not reflect this as well as it could (e.g., problems with the west entrance and lack of handicap accessibility).

· Zion is known for its music, and the organ and sanctuary acoustics enhance this mission for listeners and musicians; at the same time choir seating is often insufficient, and the sound and sight problems in the balcony mean that people who sit up there cannot share in the music-or in worship-in the same way as parishioners on the main floor.

· We value youth ministry, including confirmation and Sunday School, but our space for those activities is marginal.

· Young people don't necessarily want to spend much time here.

· Many comments were made about the basement, especially the lighting.

· The past is important to us, and we are grateful to be reminded of it through objects like the old altar and bell.

· The future is important to us also, and we want a facility that will serve Zion's needs in 20+ years as well as serving its needs today.

· Zion is fortunate to have a number of tried and true "trouble shooters" in the congregation, with institutional memory concerning how things work. If these folks were less competent, several participants noted, and had not been able to improvise time after time to patch building problems and make the electrical/sound/heating & AC systems work, we would have needed a new building (or at least major repairs) at least a decade ago; if any of us had the kind of system and repair problems in our homes that Zion has, several participants said, we would have remedied them long ago.

(This is not an exhaustive list of topics raised in the conversations, but rather ones that were stressed in one or more small-group reports to the large group, and apparently held in common throughout the room that afternoon.)

The FLPT plans to schedule several other Town Hall meetings in the months ahead.

The FLPT has now sent a survey form concerning Zion's facilities needs to members of congregational ministry teams. (Zion staff members completed similar forms earlier this year.) If you have received a form, please complete it and return it to the church office by mid-May. If you did not receive a form and would like to fill one out, you can pick one up in the office or get one from Nancy Jones at the e-mail address below.

Members of the FLPT at their most recent meeting talked about our responsibility to serve the needs of our neighbors and our neighborhood (however we define them), and to take these needs into account in any plans for our facilities. Over the next few months the team will continue to gather information and ideas both from inside and outside the congregation to inform any future building/remodeling/renovation plans.

Members of the Facilities Leadership Planning Team, listed below, would be happy to hear from you if you have ideas you'd like to share.

Lars Anderson larsanddawn@mchsi.com

Rick Dobyns, co-chair richard-dobyns@uiowa.edu

Rose Fisher

Will Hollander, co-chair hollander.will@iccsd.k12.ia.us

Nancy Jones hovjones@avalon.net

Tim Krumm timk@meardonlaw.com

David Noyes dnoyes@heery-hlmdesign.com

Pastor Mark Pries mpries@zionlutheran-ic.org

Tim Smith tnsmith@hillsbank.com