Making new the spaces where lives are made new.
We’re beginning something.
Bay Life lives to glorify God by being disciples who make disciples. That has been the heart of our mission since opening our doors on Easter Sunday 1994, and it has not changed.
“Behold, I am making all things new,” says the One seated on the throne, and that promise is the reason this church opened her doors and the reason they are still open.
For more than thirty years this has been a church where ordinary people are changed: marriages that should have ended did not, kids and teens who came for the games stayed for Jesus, and people who walked in carrying something heavy walked out lighter. God has done great things, and the facilities He’s provided us have played a vital role in His work.
Our mission is strong, but our campus could be stronger. Two of the spaces that house our ministries are due for much-needed upgrades—the time has come to make them new.
From Kingsway to what’s next.
The room our Bay Life Kids ministry meets in today was the very first Worship Center this church built — the room we moved into on Easter Sunday 1998, before it became a home for our kids.
Two rooms, one purpose.
To remove everything that stands between a person and the God who makes them new. One is the first room we ever built to worship in. The other is where we worship now.
The Bay Life Kids space
The greatest challenge in our Bay Life Kids space isn’t the growing number of children we get to minister to each week—it’s the setup of the room that houses them.
Our Bay Life Kids ministry meets in our first Worship Center space, the room this church moved into on Easter Sunday 1998. It was built to carry one voice to a seated congregation, not a room full of children all learning at once. Currently, classes meet in open-air spaces with no ceilings, so it is loud, it echoes, and children strain to hear the person telling them about Jesus.
The equipment has aged with it. Projectors, computers, wiring, microphones, and chairs are all doing work they were not built to keep doing.
The solution: we redesign the Student Center into a space built for children — individual classrooms with ceilings and acoustic dampening, and a shared open area for play and creativity, with a full technology overhaul throughout. It stops being a worship room with children in it and becomes a space made just for them.
The Worship Center A/V
Our current Worship Center has a similar technology problem. It opened in October 2003, and some of the gear running our services is nearly 25 years old. A microphone drops, a screen flickers, a light flashes, and the room gets in the way of the very thing it was built for.
COVID showed us something else. There are Lifers and seekers who are not able to be in this room at all. Upgrades to our tech will better equip us to reach them.
The solution: the room itself stays as it is; we are replacing the audio and visual technology to better support and enhance our worship gatherings for years to come.
One space, reimagined.
These plans are all one project: the redesigned Student Center, built around a large-group worship and teaching room, dedicated small group spaces, a family play area, and an updated lobby. The Worship Center upgrade is a separate project — audio, video, and technology only. The room itself isn’t changing, so there are no construction plans for it.
“As we make these spaces new, we’ll be better postured to see God make people new.”
Pastor Mark Saunders — read his full letter →
Together we are asking God for $2.8 million, to be raised in the next three years over and above our regular giving. It’s a vision far too big for any one of us, but as each of us seeks God and sacrifices as He leads, each of these things can be made new. May every offering we bring, no matter the size, be given as an act of worship to our God.
Pray. Consider. Commit. Expect.
1. Pray
Pray first. Ask God to shape and form you in this season and to work both in you and through you. Beginning September 14, join fellow Lifers for 27 days of prayer and study that follow each Sunday’s message. Then walk with us on September 26, through the spaces this project would renew, praying for the lives that will be changed within them.
Pray that God would move powerfully in you and in His church at Bay Life to accomplish all He has set before us.
2. Consider
Join us for the Made New series beginning September 13, where we’ll meet five unlikely people God made new — a tax collector, a runaway prophet, a woman at a well, a forgotten prince, and a man on his way to arrest Christians…
Reflect on what God has done for you, then prayerfully consider how He may be asking you to give in this season. Discuss it as a family and give yourselves time, because this is not a decision to rush but an opportunity to step into God’s peace as we move forward in faith and sacrifice together.
3. Commit
On Celebration Sunday, October 11, we make our commitments and bring our first fruits. Made New commitments run three years, over and above your regular giving, which lowers the monthly step and gives families room to plan.
First fruits is the biblical practice of giving to God first rather than last, and many bring a first gift that morning to start us off strong. Whatever you bring, bring it as an act of worship. Let’s answer as one church.
4. Expect
Expect God to provide through you and for you, according to His riches in glory. He has done it here before: a $3.5 million debt cleared six months early in 2015, churches planted and restored, and new spaces built to care for people in 2018. He will do it again.
Expect to be changed, because people who give sacrificially rarely stay the same, and neither do churches. And expect to meet the people you gave to reach. You have not met them yet.