Via VirtueOnline:
All Souls will move into a former home-improvement store
By Dan Scanlan
http://jacksonville.com/
May 20, 2010
When the pastor at Mandarin's All Souls Anglican Church tells his Jacksonville flock to take a hike around 10 a.m. Sunday, it's OK this time.
They will be going home.
The Anglican church members will walk to a new sanctuary at the former First Coast Home Center at 4042 Hartley Road, a happier walk than many made July 15, 2007, when they left the church they had called home for 28 years due to a split from the Episcopal church.
Home has been Mandarin Middle School for Sunday services since then. Now Sunday's 1.5-mile hike is to the flock's future, which was almost under their noses, said the Rev. Gene Strickland.
"We had been looking at other properties, and several parishioners had been driving past it for some time as we prayed for the right place," said the pastor. "One saw the 'For Sale' sign that he hadn't noticed for the year he had driven by it. We stopped to talk to the owner and two days later we had a contract and everything fell into place."
Looking around the former home-improvement store with a wooden deck, pergolas and seven miniature home fronts that will soon house church offices, member Lynn Lindsey said it seems like the answer to a prayer.
"I think the whole thing was God's timing, from finding out how much they wanted and everything that happened since then," he said. "It has all fallen in place."
All Souls was founded in 1979, an offshoot of All Saints Episcopal Church in San Marco. When some Episcopal congregations split with the church after a gay priest was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, All Souls joined the shift to a more conservative Anglican discipline.
The Episcopal Diocese claimed All Souls' building as its property, so Strickland and his congregation left, locking up the old church and walking to the middle school at 5100 Hood Road to complete services. A temporary office was rented nearby, while Crown Point Baptist Church offered space for its youth ministries as the search went on for a new home.
The former storefront a few doors down from Old St. Augustine Road originally cost $2.8 million but was sold for $1.5 million, paid for with parishioner pledges. There's almost four acres with a pond, parking and a former garden center with weatherproof roof. Brick flooring inside that spells "FCH" can stand for "Find Christ Here," Strickland said.
Seven Victorian-style "homes" line two walls, built to showcase the former occupant's siding, window and gutter products. They will house ministries in a classic Main Street kind of design, rocking chairs set to decorate one "house's" big porch destined to be the women's ministry center.
Add those and classrooms off a hallway behind them, and there are 17 rooms ready for staff and church activities. The big workroom will be the parish hall with the main sales floor walled in to create a main sanctuary.
"When you go from having a home for almost 30 years and you are sitting out in the desert, you can do two things," Strickland said. "You can either die or you can get incredibly strong. We did not die. We are still together and we are coming here to start a new mission and ministry center."
Parishioners will be joined by Crown Point Baptist members for Sunday's walk to the new storefront church. As for the former sanctuary on Old St. Augustine Road, the Episcopal Diocese sold it to CrossView Church, which had been meeting at Greenland Pines Elementary School.
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