Photo Journalism Story

Unexpected Blessings of a Stay at Home Order

            

            Kim Baptist Church in Kim Colorado is taking advantage of the stay-at-home order to fully renovate their church building for the first time in 50 years. Pastor Mark Bell and his wife MaryAnn move the pews to clean the carpets. It is a perfect opportunity to clean carpets since the worshippers are temporarily not meeting in the building due to the COVID-19 virus and the stay-at-home order.

The order is now set to go through April 30^th. They know that this is a great chance to get the painting done too. The church members have been wanting to repaint for a while before COVID-19 happened. While cleaning and prepping the walls to paint, they discover some beams under the floor that desperately need to be fixed. So, they and the volunteers from the church start fixing the floor.

They take the old 70’s paneling down before they paint, and they find drywall. The members decide to re-texture the walls. The more projects they do, the more they realize that the other rooms need the walls re-textured too. The more donations that come in the more that they can do.

The church has many enthusiastic volunteers who are working on these renovations. They are priming the walls. They learn that beautiful hardwood is under the old carpet in the baptistry. They check the office floor to see if there is hardwood there too. They find hardwood and pull up the old carpet.

Next, they focus on the stage. It needs to be rebuilt, just like the beams under it. As the men are rebuilding the stage, the women repaint and update the bathrooms. The volunteers realize that if they are going to rebuild the stage they will need to modernize the wiring and sound system.

They build a new sound system, repaint the speakers and build an audio/visual booth to run the sound system from. Soon they will replace the ceiling and the doors. The sound booth is equipped with everything that one needs to run the PowerPoints, microphones, speakers and music. All media will run through this booth.

Pastor Mark and his son Josh Bell paint and detail the speakers for the sound system. They also take this time to sand and re-stain the pulpit and the trim for the audio/visual booth. The sunny desert weather is perfect for getting all these smaller detailed projects done.

Now they are deciding on what color the new chairs will be. They will replace the old red pews to make people more comfortable during the services. They also discuss the option of adding sliding barn doors to the front of the sanctuary. The design team has been working hard to make sure everything is modern and beautiful.

This project is estimated to last another week and a half. The stay-at-home order turned out to be a blessing for this small-town church as they were able to modernize and make their space more efficient.