05-04-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
May 4, 2024
Many of you have heard the exciting news about the Church Leadership giving the green light on moving ahead with a new playground. We started a capital campaign more than a decade ago with the hope of paying off old debt, updating our air conditioning units, improving signage, redoing restrooms on the second floor of the Forum Building, and, among other dream items, was a new playground. Of course, Hurricane Harvey and the flood interrupted that good work, and though we paid off our debt and have new AC units throughout the campus, there were a few items on that to-do list that never got touched. And even in our rebuilding after the flood, we hoped to have enough money to install a new playground outside the Forum Building. We sort of ran out of money, though we had completed most of the projects. The playground might be one of the most used spaces on our property, especially with children from the Barbara Bush Library, and that’s with a less than stellar playground. Of course, when you install a playground at a church that is going to get a lot of use, you can’t buy equipment like you’d buy for your backyard. You need commercial-grade playground equipment, and as you can imagine, the price tag is not cheap. Some of the larger playgrounds that you see in a local park (much bigger than what we could even fit in our playground area) can cost as much as $400,000. We are still pricing out what we would need, trying to determine what we can install ourselves and what might require professional assistance. With that said, I truly believe this is going to come to fruition. What I request of you right now is prayer and positive thoughts. We’ve got a wonderful team doing the research, asking the questions, exploring the options, and trying to determine what will be best for Cypress Creek Christian Church. On Monday, we will be removing the trees that need to be removed from our playground area, and then we will move on to the next step. I see this playground as a gift to our community; as a tangible expression of the Love First Life; as a concrete way of saying to those around us, “We believe children need places where they can be goofy, play, swing, make noise, create friendships, and be what God created them to be.” Thanks for those prayers as we continue our initial work.

In all the work we do, O Kind and Compassionate God, we pray for the capacity to bring alive your love for every single person, including the children among us. Amen.