On a beautiful morning, Calvary Church in Valparaiso broke ground on construction to their main campus. This is part of their expansion plans dubbed the “Even More Project.” With the growth of a church comes an increased need for gathering spaces, offices, and even increasing the size of the worship center.
The Even More Project is an $8 million dollar expansion to the existing church campus and the Life Change Center across Evans Avenue. Most of the funding for this project has come from a generosity initiative that began in the summer of 2016. These came in the form of donations from members of the church and local community. The rest of the initial needed capital was taken out in a loan.
This expansion will include increasing the capacity of the Worship Center in both length and width to allow up to 2,000 people to listen to Sunday worship.
They will also be enlarging the church foyer, or the Gathering Space, and adding a chapel for weddings and prayer as well as renovating the Children’s Ministries areas. The Life Change Center will be used for office space for the administrative staff as well as more gathering spaces for church events.
One interesting thing to note is the addition of the "side chapel." This was originally an idea that stemmed from medieval churches. Side chapels were traditionally a chapel within a larger cathedral or church. Chapels were usually smaller in design for more private forms of worship, but haven't been popular in modern churches. The side chapel adds an interesting and unique feature to Calvary's extensive list of features.
Construction at the Life Change Center across the street has been ongoing, but this week saw the ground breaking for the main campus expansions. Calvary expects the construction to take approximately 12 months to finish on the main campus. This is an exciting period of growth for this long standing church in the Valparaiso community.
While most of the needs have been met, if you feel you want to help contribute in some way, please feel free to go to calvaryweb.net/give.