- Church Information
- Spotlight
Just over ten years ago, homes were starting to fill a few “villages” and neighborhoods, but our founding outreach ambassadors, Sammy & Erma Holder, noted that even though they lived only a few thousand yards from the center of St. Lucie West, they had to drive almost half an hour to bridge I-95, the Turnpike, and/or natural barriers to get back and forth to work or to spring training games for his beloved New York Mets. Yet they joined visionaries like Les Koerselman and Jim Huffaker to rally Presbyterians in Region 1 and elsewhere to petition presbytery, Synod and General Assembly to underwrite a New Church Development effort in what was to be a vastly expanded St. Lucie West.
Now our next door neighbor, Manatee (K5) School, no longer houses our worship as it did when we launched eight years ago, but the new gym form their grade 6-8 expansion offers a ready rental option for programs as well as hundreds of additional parking spaces, while our first building at Heatherwood and California Blvds. is at full program capacity including services for the 104 children in our Little Believer’s Pre-school, weekly young adult ministry, and an annual VBS involving some 150 kids and helpers. But while our immediate area is at “building out”, the basic road system is just completing with a new Crosstown Parkway that will connect us to the slower developing projects West of I-95 and increase our ese of access for the older sections of Port St Lucie to the East.
While there is still room in our original sanctuary at our Saturday night praise service and our Sunday morning blended traditional worship, this Christmas season saw some 500-600 different men, women and children share in our pageants and special events and Easter typically sees some 250-300 join us in celebrating the resurrection of Christ. Furthermore our 20-35 “new members” each year consistently rank in the top 10 or 20 in the Presbytery even while we’ve seen scores move North.
We are also deeply blessed with highly committed elders, deacons, support staff, musicians and other volunteers and annual giving of $150,000 - $200,000 (However, our average income is nowhere near that of neighboring Martin and other counties). As noted when we were awarded the national Walton prize for outstanding new church development, our participation is highly diverse and very outreaching.
We are active mission partners with Manatee School and various local agencies, and our general mission giving most years has put us in the Presbytery top ten or twelve – including extraordinary One Great Hour and Disaster Assistance participation.
We also provide active participants in Presbytery projects with Alma Singletary participating in financial review matters, Eric Young on the Mission Support Committee (and scheduled to be a commissioner to General Assembly this summer), while Pastor George McIlrath has served as a General Assembly commissioner at Richmond in 2005 and as the present moderator of the Permanent Judicial Commission.
Our biggest challenges ahead involve staffing for outreach and youth as well as paying off a massive $750,000 mortgage (brought on in part by the slow payment of some $850,000 from the Region 1 capital campaign – a short fall of its goal of $1,000,000).
Consequently the Session and Congregation are asking Presbytery to concur with listing the “Southern 3 acres” of our 11 acre parcel for sale – a solution that still leaves us open to full development for a congregation of up to 1,000 or so, given the resources now provided by the school next door.
So as we look forward, the challenges may be very great, but we trust that the God who has blessed us in the past will lead us in the future so that 10 years from now people will not only see what was brought to life through the prayer and planning of our Presbytery forbearers, but what God has done with those who are now actively seeking to continue our call to go with Jesus “into all the villages” and neighborhoods “teaching, preaching, healing and asking”.
(Matthew 9:35-38)
We would appreciate the continued prayers of the Presbytery as we do this.