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An old school building that was purchased by a local church a few months ago is back on the market. I’m still piecing it together, but there seems to be a lot of misinformation about it in the public eye.

A blog post on Exit133.com (Rogers Elementary Back on the Market) and the comments that followed gave the impression that a church made a low-ball offer so they could flip the property. If it were true I probably would have applauded the church for their creative effort to bring in some income while helping the community. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. What they were trying to do was to move their church. Hardly the heinous things they’re being accused of doing.

There was enough in that blog post and a linked article to indicate to me that the issue was not the way it was portrayed. So I did the unthinkable. I called the church. Yes, that’s right. Instead of giving in to the usual hysteria about how Christians are trying to take over the world and control everyone and their uterus (if they have one), I decided to get the facts. It turns out that the church was neither trying to flip the property, nor where they opening a homeless shelter.

They wanted to move their growing church from their current location and to serve the community that they were to be moving into. The church has a ministry that operates throughout the week that offers assistance to the poor including showers, clothing, food (if available), prayer and counseling. That is neither a homeless shelter nor a tent city. It’s a church that is aware of a community’s needs and is reaching out with helping hands.

When the church purchased the property from the school district for a legally acceptable price ($1.6 million which met the 75% of appraised value minimum required by law) they had every intention of moving their church into the facility. It sounds like it was probably a fair price considering the state of disrepair it was in.

I wasn’t able to verify, but an article in the News Tribune (Permits still needed in school-to-church project) from that time indicated that permitting was delayed and the church was forced to make a decision to purchase without knowing if they would get the required conditional use permit. I’m guessing that the permit didn’t come through.

Once they purchased the property they began to clean it up. They’re still working on it as of the time of this posting. Among other things they’ve put a new roof on the building and are repairing some of the water damage caused by poor maintenance by the school district. I’m sure the neighbors are complaining about the junk being taken away and the building being restored to a usable condition. But it appears that the church is coming through with what it promised, even though the neighbors never welcomed them in to do it.

They’ve put the property back on the market, presumably because they weren’t allowed to move in (I’ll be trying to verify that). The price they’ve put on it, after replacing the roof, cleaning it up and making other repairs is $2.8 million. I sincerely hope they are able to get what they’re asking. They seem like the kind of group that will put that profit to work in the community. Unfortunately, it won’t be that neighborhood, it will be some other.

I will certainly be praying that they’ll be blessed by the Lord in their efforts.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Christianity, Tacoma Contradictions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.