Mission 1217 Project

Fall 2004 :: Grace had the desire and vision to provide the community with a quality "third-place". (Third Place - the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two environments of home and the workplace.) The Third Place stream impacts every other stream as our desire is to provide a welcoming environment for mom's in ministry, internationals, and our weekend service guests. It will also allow us to draw attention to both local and global compassion needs through varoius events that we do in the new building.

Summer 2006 :: In light of our commitment to "bless nations" and seeing our growing fruitfulness in this area, we pursued and developed blueprints to construct what we referred to as an "All Nations House", that would be located in close proximity to CMU. This place would serve International Students and families by providing them with a place where they could feel welcomed, comfortable, and safe, as well as provide additional space for a variety of church ministries. In the end, we realized that more time was necessary to allow this value more time to "season" into the congregation.

Spring 2007 :: With the need for additional childrens ministry space increasing rapidly, we had the vision of bringing all children under one roof, instead of having different age groups spread out between several different buildings in the downtown area. Although we evaluated over 24 different buildings and scenarios in central Michigan, nothing really seemed to meet our needs and be worth what people were asking, until The Embers.

Fall 2007 :: Our burden for local and global compassion ministries expanded to incorporate several large scale relief and support projects, such as our Love Mt. Pleasant and AngelFood campaigns. Part of these projects included providing food relief...and we began to envision how much more of an impact we could make if we had the space and ability to store and refrigerate significant amounts of supplies at any given time. For example, with the numerous walk-in freezers, refrigerators, and storage space, we would be able to purchase bulk food (at a cheaper rate), store it safely and distribute as needed. At this time, The 1217 project was brought back on-line and pledges were made by the congregation.

January 2008:: We developed a comprehensive plan to minister to "Moms In Ministry". This ministry would serve to help coordinate babysitting for families involved in ministry at Grace. Fall of 2008:: The vision of a first class third place was rekindled and expanded (with The 1217 building in mind). The purpose is to provide a comfortable and excellent environment where the church body and our local community could cross paths and build meaningful relationships.

This covers the remianing trim and furniture needs in the Tease area.

This is going to be the family entrance at Mission 1217. We are excited to open this area up, provide an easily accessable bathroom, as well as create a welcoming space for our weekend guests.

This amount reflects the flooring, painting, drywalling, and furniture needs of this space.

This covers the necessary demolition, framing, electrical, plumbing, and flooring needs for the Kitchen space.

The Li'l Church and Kids Church age groups are going to be increasing in numbers over the coming years. This provides for enough cubby systems to meet their needs. In addition, this will provide a double door entrance to the lower level CM space. This will greatly help drop-off and pick up processes.

This stairwell will allow a smooth flow of traffice from the Front Lobby down to the CM Lower Level. This will provide a much better flow for guests during our weekend services.

This will cover the equipment needed to brew fresh coffee on a weekly basis for services and other events.