05403
August 4, 2005

Second site

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE — Until one year ago, members of First Presbyterian Church in Punta Gorda FL, had worshipped at the same downtown location for more than a century.

Florida, scoring a direct 

hit on Punta Gorda, leveling homes, businesses and much of First Presbyterian Church.

     Now, at last, the congregation is preparing to bid farewell to its wrecked hull of a church with a final service at the historic site this Sunday at 10 a.m.

demolished, and the congregation will go forward with plans to move to another building less than two miles away.

     About 100 members are likely to be on hand for the farewell service. They will gather under tents in the old church’s parking lot for what’s expected to be an emotional send-off and a rite of passage to the new building.

     “We’re hoping that it will be a very meaningful goodbye to the work and ministry of this church that was at this location for a hundred and four years,” said the Rev. Steve Mock, the pastor, “… that it will be a stepping stone to many, many years of service at a new site.”

     Member Gail Thornton is anticipating a tearful occasion. “I already bought a big box of Kleenex,” she said.

     Elder Joan Hoffman, a First church member for 15 years, said the final service at the historic site will be an opportunity for the congregation to look to the future and reflect on its past.

     “It’s like losing an old friend,” said Hoffman, a New Jersey native. “It’s the death of a long-lasting friendship and memories that the church brings to mind, and so much that has gone on in the past — and people you know that have been there and have passed on. It will be very emotional.”

uncertain future.

    “I believe that God is going to use this to take us in a new direction, that we’re on an exciting journey,” said Thornton, First church’s clerk of session. “We don’t quite

place so that we will have … a facility that will allow us to minister to people in a much greater way than we ever have.”

     Thornton, who lost her mobile home to the hurricane, sees Sunday’s service as “almost like another step in closure, the emotions of all of that. … I lost my home as well as my church home. This is just another step in the healing process from (Hurricane) Charley.”

     First church, founded in 1895, had been at the same location since 1901. The building Hurricane Charley destroyed was built in 1961 — in the wake of Hurricane Donna, which damaged the previous old, wood-frame church.

     Sunday’s service will be the first at the longtime location since a parking-lot service just after the hurricane.

     Since then, worship has taken place in the fellowship hall of nearby Burnt Store Presbyterian Church in Punta Gorda, a retirement community of more than 15,000 people near the west coast of Florida.

     First’s congregation will keep meeting at the Burnt Store church until its new building — formerly a restaurant — is fully renovated. Right now they expect to make the move next March.

     First wasn’t the only Presbyterian church in the area that took a bad beating from Hurricane Charley. Chapel By The Sea, on Fort Myers Beach, suffered serious wind and water damage. First church of Port Charlotte sustained damage to its roof, steeple and porches, and lost numerous trees that were snapped in two or overturned.

     Mock said his text for Sunday’s service is from Hebrews 11 on the subject of faith.

     “I want to draw the continuity,” he said. “Even though we’re moving to a different site, it is an act of faith that started the church and that’s maintained the church. Now it’s an act of faith that moves it to a new site.”

     He said he shares members’ sense of loss, but is confident that the congregation is making the right decision, as “we really have felt God’s leading through this whole thing.”

     Longtime member Bob Kiskaddon, a retired physician and former First church leader, admitted he’d really rather preserve the congregation’s heritage by remaining at the current site, but said he knows that the move is a great opportunity.

     “I’m hoping we can see this through and reposition ourselves to carry the type of service to the community that we have over the years,” said 89-year-old Kiskaddon, whose father was a Presbyterian minister. “I think we can probably do it at the location that has been picked.”

     Mock, who became pastor in July 2003, said the congregation looked into the possibility of rebuilding at the same site, but too many obstacles stood in the way.

     “It just didn’t make any sense to rebuild here,” he said. “It would have been very limiting to continue and try and do ministry here. It would have been expensive. It would have cost us more than what it probably is going to cost us out there, and taken longer to get in.”

     The congregation voted on Easter Sunday, unanimously, to move.

     The church’s new home is an 8,000-square-foot building that once housed the Italian-American Club, on a 4.6-acre site on the outskirts of town.

     First church will have a larger campus and room to expand, something not possible at the cramped, .8-acre location downtown.

     The cost of the new building and the property was $900,000, Mock said, and the renovation is expected to require another $950,000.

     He said insurance money paid for the land and building, and the renovation will be covered by the sale of the downtown site. 

     Plans call for gutting the old restaurant, installing new floors and walls and adding a pitched roof. A 5,000-square-foot dining hall will become a sanctuary with seating for about 200 worshippers and a fellowship hall to accommodate about 130 people.

     A bar and lounge will become a choir room and offices. An existing office will be transformed into a conference room.

     Mock said the congregation hopes to build a new sanctuary — at a cost estimated at $1.3 million to $1.6 million — within five years.

     One stained-glass window from the old church, featuring Jesus reaching out to the world, will be part of the entrance of the fellowship hall.

     The new building won’t have a steeple. Mock said it hasn’t been decided yet whether a steeple will be included in plans for the future sanctuary.