Tacoma
Mars Hill Church Tacoma has put more than 6,000 volunteer hours into preparing their new location—that’s more than $150,000 worth of volunteer labor.
All 43 of the church’s community groups are actively participating in work parties that take place Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, plus some Saturdays. By the end of the project they will have invested close to 8,000 volunteer hours renovating the inside of the church.
Three key areas have kept volunteers occupied: the office, kids’ area, and sanctuary.
The office had severe water damage and bad cracks in the walls and ceilings. These have been repaired and repainted.
After the ceiling tiles are installed, the office area will be finished!
The kids’ area was originally a maze of tiny rooms that needed a lot of love.
Volunteers tore down walls to expand the rooms, reinforced the ceiling, created new walls, put in all new drywall, and applied a lot of paint.
The last thing to be done is to carpet the entire area.
Tacoma kids earned their keep recently with a kids’ painting party and expect their area to be ready by December 14th.
In the sanctuary, the ceiling was literally falling down when Mars Hill Tacoma took over. That ceiling has been completely rehabilitated and looks spectacular.
More time went into that ceiling than any other area, requiring roughly 2,500 hours by itself! The next stage is to finish painting the sanctuary walls so the floors can be refinished, the aisles carpeted, and the pews replaced.
Everett
Mars Hill Church Everett hosted work parties every Wednesday and Saturday from June through September of 2013.
Since Labor Day they have upped that number to four work parties per week.
On average, 10 to 25 people have been putting in hard labor every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night, plus all day on Saturdays.
That number grew to 50 people a week in the fall.
Everett poured out 400 hours of work parties totaling more than 5,000 volunteer hours and $100,000 of donated labor.
All necessary demolition, painting, landscaping, finishing, cleaning, framing, minor electrical and plumbing, flooring, and IT have been successfully completed.
