Saint Matthew Lutheran Church’s community open house earlier this month enabled residents to see the church’s recent renovations.
Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Moorestown held a community open house for all to see its recent building addition on Nov. 2.
The addition – which includes two accessible family bathrooms on the same level as the church and office – expands the accessibility, storage and use on the main level of the property, which better serves the church and community groups that utilize it.
The addition includes accessible, family-friendly bathrooms and storage adjacent to the church’s sanctuary and meeting rooms. This project is the fulfillment of 15 years of planning and dreaming.
“I was in awe of all the people who really helped put this together, because we have so many talented people in our congregation that really enabled this to come to fruition,” said Heather Lerch, president of the church’s congregation council.
David Barger, head of the church’s facilities planning committee, and Max Frable, liaison for the project, shared that the building addition started years ago when the church conducted an extensive survey on all aspects of the congregation.
Of the top findings, at least two-thirds had to do with facilities – the campus, the buildings, etc. – and many of those had to do with lack of accessibility in one way or another. The largest need, Frable said, was for restrooms that would be on the church’s main floor. Now that these additions are complete, the church wants to resolve other issues to be determined.
But the addition is just the beginning.
“The way I looked at this project was, this is not your typical type of construction where it might have a 20-year lifespan,” Frable explained. “Most houses today are built with maybe a 15-, 20-year lifespan. That’s just how they’re constructed. This is a 50-to-100-year-old building.
“We’re building this for (the) long-term.”
“The beauty about this congregation is that church is never just an edifice, it’s about what we do and how we live through our teachings and our faith and this organization, this community of believers, does that every day,” said state Sen. Troy Singleton.
“Church is truly the epicenter of our communities and if we continue along those veins, I think we make our community better and this institution, this faith-based group, has done an incredible job of it.”
Saint Matthew is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest Lutheran church body in the U.S. Live the Love – the church’s motto – has four specific areas: love within the congregation, love local and global communities, love all of God’s creation and love through diverse inclusion.
“We hope to show our community, within our congregation but also beyond, that living the love through caring for the environment, living the love through caring for others in the congregation and outside the congregation are important to us,” Lerch noted. “We hope that these accessibility projects are a reflection of that.”
