Church struggles, Celina Record

The Bridge Church has only weeks to find a new Celina venue for weekly services Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Mar 10, 2016 0 Bridge Church 1 Photo courtesy of Matthew Prather Pastor Matthew Prather addressed members of The Bridge Church’s congregation earlier this month and advised them that the 2-year-old church, which meets weekly at Celina Elementary School, will soon need to find a new venue. Bridge Church 2 Photo courtesy of Matthew Prather Members of The Bridge Church often volunteer to provide supplies for and serve refreshments at city-sponsored events held in Celina’s downtown square. Bridge Church 3 Photo courtesy of Matthew Prather The Bridge Church sponsored an activity during the city’s Fun Day event that was held in October in Celina’s downtown square. Houses of worship come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them boast traditional steeples and pews. Case in point: The Bridge Church. Since its founding two years ago, the church has set up shop on Sunday mornings in the cafeteria at Celina Elementary School, at 550 S. Utah Dr., a space it rents from the Celina ISD. Each week, Pastor Matthew Prather hauls into the building the portable equipment he needs to share his sermons with the church’s 60 or so congregation members. During one of his talks earlier this month, Prather broke the news to the assemblage that The Bridge Church will soon need to find a new home. In late February, he said, he met with school district officials who informed him that a due to a change in district policy it would no longer be able to rent the facility to the church. “We were just surprised,” Prather said of the decision. “We’re just thankful we got to use it for so long. … We appreciate the school district letting us use it for the time they did.” According to Celina ISD Superintendent Rick DeMasters, the district’s facilities are “limited. We just don’t have enough space for all of the groups that want to utilize those.” Despite the fact that the district would like to offer up school facilities to churches and other community-based organizations, he said, “It’s all we can do with our current staff to take care of and facilitate our own activities.” As Celina ISD grows, “That’s going to become an even larger problem for us,” DeMasters said. “It’s just a question of how can we facilitate (outside organizations) if we don’t have the manpower with which to do that? It makes it incredibly difficult for us as far as scheduling goes.” The Bridge Church will need to relocate its weekly services by the end of April. But to where? “That’s a good question,” Prather said. Large commercial meeting spaces in Celina are nearly nonexistent. He put out a call out on the church’s Facebook page asking members who may be aware of available local venues to contact him, but so far has received few leads. “Being a smaller town to begin with, there’s just not a lot of empty buildings,” he explained. Moving the church’s services to a venue in a nearby city is not an option, Prather said, since most of the congregation members reside in Celina. Also, The Bridge Church is active in the community. It is a fixture at city-sponsored events held in Celina’s downtown square and elsewhere, for which it often provides volunteer help, audio-visual equipment, supplies and refreshments, among others. “If the city’s doing it, we’re usually out there,” said Prather, who also serves on Celina Main Street’s advisory board as well as its Movies on the Square committee. “We definitely do care about Celina and our community and we want to serve it.” “They have been very instrumental in helping us cut costs so that we could put more funds into the events we provide for the public,” said Celina Main Street Director Bridgette Bise. “The church seems to be always willing to step up and help out.” If The Bridge Church has not secured a new venue by next month, Prather said it may begin holding services at public locations or in private homes. “We’ll have to figure out an alternate plan at that point.”