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We had our first church dinner on Sunday, November 22, in our newly remodeled fellowship hall and kitchen. It was an emotional time for those of us who have been involved since the very beginning. It's been amazing to watch an old broken down building become a place where friends can gather together and share worship, a meal, and laughter. Here are some before pictures...

The kitchen...and the leaky ceiling.

The old fellowship hall and during the work...

The new kitchen including the new storage closet built in the back! In these pictures the floor is not complete, we were laying it that day.

The new fellowship hall as people began to come in for church Sunday morning. Everyone is hovering over the coffee pot and admiring.

Thanks to everyone for their help! We're on to the Sunday School wing next!

Come Over For Dinner!

The Solid Rock will be having a potluck dinner Sunday, November 22nd following our morning worship service. Family and friends are welcome to attend. See Mary Jo Sowd for instructions on what to bring. Guests may bring their appetites. Our new kitchen should be complete by then!

Becoming Contagious!

We recently started a new series entitled "How to Become a Contagious Christian". The series is based on a book by the same name, authored by Bill Hybels. We will be exploring different aspects of reaching out to people and sharing our faith in a practical and effective way. The series will be taught during Sunday morning worship and Tuesday bible study.

Open Doors

Over 30 years ago the front doors to the church were removed and filled in with concrete blocks. This is the front of the church that faces the road. A smaller, side door off the parking lot has been used as the main entrance ever since. The sidewalk, still in good condition, had long since been covered with dirt and grass. A tacky piece of sheet metal covered a hole to keep animals out. A wonderful lady, Anna Gamble, who along with her husband had pastored The Solid Rock many years ago, had a dream to see the front entrance reopened. When the new front doors were fully installed, we sent someone for this dear lady. The picture of her standing at the entrance was taken just after she walked in and saw the doors for the first time. Just another dream that has come true at The Solid Rock!

The Big Workday Overview

Thanks to everyone who showed up August 15th for the workday! We had people from several churches in the area come to help us as we push to complete our building project. I'll be posting several updates about the work as I could not possibly describe everything that happened in one post! The work actually began on Friday with some young men coming to help do some preparation work. Then Saturday morning the Apostolic Ministry Team (AMT) met early that morning for their monthly class. Afterwards everyone enjoyed coffee, muffins, and fruit before jumping right in to the work. The churches we would like to thank are:
The Link in Canton, OH http://www.thelinkchurch.org/
Dover Link in Dover, OH http://www.doverlinkblogspot.com/
Christian Life Center of Minerva in Minerva, OH http://www.clcminerva.com/
Grace Pentecostal Church in Salem, OH http://www.gracepentecostalsalem.org/
North Point Apostolic in Stow, OH http://www.northpointapostolic.com/

Some of projects we accomplished (more details to follow):

Landscaping around our sign. Why is the woman the only one actually using her shovel?

Painting the shed.

Removing wallpaper in the Sunday School room, hallway, and the fellowship hall.

Framing the new walls in the second bathroom, putting up drywall and board for the tile.



Lunch. Very Important. Thanks to all the ladies who helped serve and make food for the hungry crowd.

The front entrance way reopened and our new doors installed. Thank you to Grace Pentecostal Church for donating the new doors!

Hanging and finishing drywall in the fellowship hall and a Sunday School room.

Moving the stove (and the gas line) so that we can build a storage closet in the kitchen. The ladies also cleaned the kitchen thoroughly.

Painting the trim in the sanctuary.

Putting up ceiling fans and light fixtures in the sanctuary.

These are just some of the projects we were able to do with the unified effort of our sister churches. The Solid Rock members were speechless and emotional after everyone left and we were left standing in a church building that is almost unrecognizable from a year ago. We're not finished but we are going forward.

Look for future posts for details on individual projects and highlights!

Work Day Saturday, August 15th

The Link Network AMT (Apostolic Ministry Team) is sponsoring a collective work effort at The Solid Rock on August 15th at 10am. Teams from all of the churches in The Link Network will be descending upon the church to lend a hand in our building project. We appreciate their support and are excited to see what we accomplish. All members of The Solid Rock are encouraged to attend. There are multitudes of tasks from simple to skilled, so even if you are not "handy" with tools or construction come on over on Saturday the 15th. We'll have plenty going on, and will be supplying lunch to the laborers.

Check out what The Link Network is all about: www.thesolidrockonline.com/linknetwork.html

Emotional Health Series

We will be spending the next few months studying emotional health as a church. Pastor Cruz has introduced the concept of being unable to be spiritually mature until we are emotionally mature. He has brought out many ways that our emotions affect our relationship with God and with others. Carrying around unresolved emotions can hinder us and prevent us from fulfilling our purpose.
Pastor Cruz recommends the book "The Emotionally Healthy Church" by Peter Scazzero. He is basing much of his teaching from the book because he feels it is an excellent guide to the church on this subject. You can purchase it at www.amazon.com for around $12.
Pastor Cruz will be speaking on this subject on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings until he feels it has been covered sufficiently.

Almost there

The sanctuary (auditorium) is mostly finished. we're cleaning and arranging right now. We hope to be holding our services in there soon, possibly this week! It looks so different. Fresh and open are words that come to mind. It just feels like there's an expectancy in the air. I cannot even imagine the depth of the experiences and growth that will happen in that room. The room itself is not a magic forum for God to work in, but it is a place where His people gather together to celebrate, grow, and be refreshed. That opens so many possibilities!

Phase I - The Bathrooms

Phase I of our Dream project was to get one of the bathrooms comfortable and functionable. The bathrooms were a mess. Pipes sticking out of walls, the water pump occupying a corner of the men's restroom, no hot water, old fixtures, worn tile, and a rather nauseating decor.
Enter a few men and their trusty sledgehammers and we were soon down to studs and concrete. The plumbing needed replacing and had it's own set of complications. Through much hard, dirty, and frustrating work we had a small group of men who did everything they could themselves. Our ace in the hole was Pastor Schwendeman from our sister church in Salem (http://www.gracepentecostalsalem.com/). He is a skilled craftsman and lent us his expertise and did much of the work himself. We are most appreciative of all of his help. He continues to help us as we move forward with our other projects. In my future posts I will outline our sanctuary remodel, of which he was a tremendous part. We have only finished one bathroom so far. The other is gutted but still empty. We went ahead with our second phase, the sanctuary. Now that it is nearing completion we will turn our focus to finishing the other bathroom. It is so exciting to watch the transformation! One gentlemen who has been a faithful member of The Solid Rock since the 1970's remarked that the remodeled bathroom was the nicest he has ever seen anything done at the church in all of his years there. We thank God for His provision, and for the vision that He has given us to do this project with excellence. We want to give the very best we have to this community and give them a place to come and be introduced to the hope they are looking for. All of this work is for those who haven't even been inside our doors but are looking for something more. We want to have a reputation for caring for people to the best of our abilities.

We're Open!

One of the first things we wanted to do was let the surrounding community know that we are open. We invited friends to come and help as we passed out hundreds of fliers in areas near the church. We made a plan, mapped it out, assigned captains and were amazed by what was accomplished when everyone worked together.











Here are some of the volunteers checking out their map and planning the best route.



On the fliers was an invitation to join us later for a picnic so we could meet some of our neighbors.





Our very competant grill chefs were prepared to serve up hot dogs and hamburgers when the hungry volunteers and neighbors descended.

We set up a volleyball net and some corn toss tournaments. It really was a very successful day getting the word out that The Solid Rock is definitely open!

Rebuilding Lives

As we are renovating the church facility, we also want to continue to assist people in finding new hope and direction for their life. The man pictured was the first person to be baptized as a result of the The Solid Rock's outreach. Pastor Cruz baptized him at our sister church, Christian Life Center of Minerva, because we have not yet finished the remodeling of our sanctuary and installed our own. This is the reason we are pouring time, energy, and finances into fixing up a building. We want to see lives changed by the love of God. Our purpose statement is Strength for Today, Hope for Tomorrow, and Purpose for Life. Those are the things we want to offer our community. The times we live in are unstable and chaotic, but we want to offer a solid rock to those who would like something to hold on to in the storm. That's what "The Dream" project is really all about.

Rebuilding the Walls

Nehemiah was a Jewish prophet who was living in a foreign land. He held an important place among the King's servants. Then he received news from Jeruselem. The walls of the city, it's protection and stability, were in shambles. The people were scattered about and had no leader to rally them. Nehemiah was troubled to the point that the King noticed. Once Nehemiah explained his auguish over his beloved city, the King granted him anything he needed to go back to Jeruselem and rebuild the walls.

It wasn't an easy process. There were those who mocked and made plans against Israel to attack them and tear down what they accomplished. Yet Nehemiah rallied the people and set everyone to work. In one hand they held tools, and in the other they held weapons. They rebuilt the walls of Jeruselem together.

At the beginning of the year Pastor Cruz taught a series called "Rebuilding the Walls". We took the life of Nehemiah and extracted the valuable wisdom in his story, because we, too, are rebuilding walls in a city where they have been broken down. On the outside we are literally constructing and fixing actual walls with drywall, caulk, and paint, but we're rebuilding walls in a spiritual way too.

The church is not the building; it's the people. We want to build a stable foundation in prayer, the Bible, and in community. These are things that have been missing for a while and as the church we're rebuilding them so that we can offer a place of hope to others.

One of the first things we had to do was tear out the old fixtures, walls, pipes, etc. in order to prepare for the remodeling. The men especially enjoyed this process. Tearing out the bathrooms was dirty, exhausting work, but they worked tirelessly at it. They had to haul all of the debris out to the 40 yard dumpster in the back of the church. We filled it up pretty quick! It was the first of many too!

Birth of "The Dream" project

In January 2009, the church officially appointed Tony Cruz as their pastor. He and his family had been assisting Elder Oval Eller in the work in Alliance for over a year. Once they began to feel that this was where God wanted them to be they began to make plans to move to Alliance. Once on site, it was only a matter of time before God would meld the Cruz family and The Solid Rock church together.

Now this once forgotten, broken down church found itself with a vision, a purpose, and a leader. We are ready to tear down mountains (or bathrooms, if need be) and move forward toward the dream that we have.

When Pastor Cruz began a series "Dreams Really Do Come True" during Sunday morning worship, the dream began to take shape as we studied the lives of dreamers in the Bible and learned that we could dream once again. Things we once thought impossible were no longer just wishful thinking but God began to inspire us to reach for the things we longed for.

The Dream project is more far reaching than a simple blog post can explain. On the outside it seems like just another church building project. We are remodeling the existing structure. We have plans drawn up, and can see it in our minds. It's going to be beautiful. We've already started, as you'll see in later posts, but it's not just about drywall, tile, and paint. It isn't just making a comfortable, contemporary setting. It's about a new beginning. It's a church that everyone thought had died out and that soon there would be a "For Sale" sign out front. Then God dipped His finger in the stagnant water and stirred the pool. Suddenly miracles are available.

There are over 24,000 people living in Alliance. The biggest part of our dream is to give every single one of them the chance to know who Jesus is and what He can do in their life.

Here are some more "before" pictures.

How it all began

On a day full of promise and running over with the grace of God, Bishop F. Joe Ellis received a call from a couple in Alliance, OH. They were struggling to keep the doors of a church open and were looking for help. The previous pastor had been gone about a year and a half and most of the members had left as time went by and a new pastor was not found. Now only a small handful remained. The building had been deteriorating for a long time with no one making repairs or updating the facilities. It was nearing the end of 2007.
Bishop Ellis is the overseer of The Link Network, a group of churches who operate under the leadership of The Link, a church in Canton, OH. A few meetings later, The Solid Rock was officially incorporated into the network and help began to arrive. Elder Oval Eller became the Interim Pastor of the church, to lead the work until a permanent pastor could be found.
Minister Tony Cruz and his family began to come regularly to the church to help, commuting from Canton. Soon the Cruz family began to be more involved and feel the call of God to the city of Alliance. High on the list of needs was the condition of the building. It was infested with spiders, filled with outdated items, the water supply was unusable, the roof had holes where you could see outside, and the front doors had been bricked over and covered with metal.
The Dream began to germinate in the hearts of the people as God began to work. Through the generosity of multiple sources, things began to turn around. A new commercial roof was donated, including labor. We were able to hook up to the city water system. We exterminated our creepy crawly friends. We filled up dumpsters with trash and debris. A fresh wind was blowing.
Take a look at some of our "before" pictures.