WELS members should ask why Holy Mother Synod has over $500,000 to buy a failed bar in downtown Appleton, a few blocks from a real WELS church, and even more money to fix up the bar.
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| Your offering money at work, WELS. Why it hardly got out the door, down the street, and it landed here. Recycle. |
My secret Appleton source:
Reader question: I have driven past Revolution on Franklin Street a couple times recently and noticed that the “available” sign is down. Did somebody lease finally lease the building and what is going to be in there?
Answer: That vacant building at 222 W. Franklin St., at the corner of Superior Street in Appleton, was purchased in a deal that closed Friday.
The new owner is The CORE, a church group that previously held services in the former Big Picture theater and then the OuterEdge Stage in downtown Appleton.
The Core is an outreach ministry of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Freedom.
“We’re not a standalone congregation. We’re a second campus,” said campus pastor Jim Skorzewski, who is known as Pastor Ski. “The Revolution building fell into our lap. It’s been a blessing.”
His congregation tends to be on the young side, mostly under age 35. Worship includes live bands. The Core will continue to hold its Sunday evening worship services at OuterEdge until this building is ready in September.
“We were never looking for a building, but we we’re always looking for a building,” he said. “We didn’t want to be a church that gets a building and then its vision and mission fall to the back burner because everything turns into paying the mortgage. We wanted to put our dollars into flesh and blood, people and relationships.”
Online, real estate listings show the asking price was $850,000. Outagamie County records listed its 2011 fair market value at about $523,000.
“We paid closer to fair market value,” said Jeff Ulman, a member of the church’s executive committee. “George Karl worked with us and helped us out extensively.”
George Karl, head coach of the Denver Nuggets and former coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, owned the building.
The purchase was handled through a church extension fund, said Skorzewski.
“We received a wonderful grant and loan from WELS, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Our remodeling was covered by the loan from WELS.”
Church volunteers are already inside working on the renovation. The church draws about 250 people on a typical Sunday.
Revolution was the last nightclub that operated in the Franklin Street building. It was open for about six months, until July 2010. Prior to that, the club had been opened and closed by several operators under the names Tom’s Garage, The Garage and Pulse Nightclub.
Skorzewski said the church would not keep the full liquor license that went with the building. If they chose to host wedding receptions in the building in the future, he said they would apply for a beer and wine license.
This is at least the fourth building in the Fox Cities to be converted from a business into a church in recent years, including structures that previously housed the Vineyard (now Living Faith), SK Flooring (now the Mission Church) and Big Picture (now Christ's Church of the Valley).
Note that in the printed version of this story in The Post-Crescent, the church in the Big Picture was incorrect. It is correct above.
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| "We don't have any loan money left for your congregation. We gave it to Ski and Glende for remodeling their bar, the one with Craig Groeschel on tap. But we are getting more confessional." |
Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel has left a new comment on your post "The CORE's Statistics - During Mark Schroeder's Wa...":
Ichabod -
You say:
"WELS members should ask why Holy Mother Synod has over $500,000 to buy a failed bar in downtown Appleton, a few blocks from a real WELS church, and even more money to fix up the bar."
Here's my theory:
There are no limits to which the WELS will go to attempt to keep up with the culture. I think that certain personalities in WELS high places desire to change the public perception, that WELS is cosmopolitan - and, that it is a place for all people to make their "church home." Such perception though, is not Scriptural, as all one has to do is read and think about Christ's Parable of the Sower and the Seed. When a church body basically ignores the Holy Spirit and His work, its efforts to permeate the culture will always be of a fleshly nature. Hence, the shift to the teaching and preaching of universal objective justification, contrary to Christ's words found in Matthew 7 about the Narrow Gate.
Nathan M. Bickel
www.thechristianmessage.org
www.moralmatters.org
