The two pictures above are pictures of the Community Room on Prince in downtown Lancaster right on Prince Street (above Prince Street Cafe). Veritas has used this space back when we were a ministry of Hempfield COB as well as for our last 2 Music and Art Fundraising Nights. Last month I became aware that the Primary Lease Holder was leaving and that the owner of the building was looking for someone to pick up the Primary Lease of the space. Well we have been looking for a 24/7 for about a year to hold various missional and cultural engagement dreams as well as future worship gatherings and have been coming up with nothing (too much money to renovate, one didn't want us to go to the borough, too small, etc...). For a few weeks another community was possibly interested in the space as the primary lease holder and I found out a week or so ago that they were no longer interested in being the primary lease holders. So now our community is currently praying and discerning together whether we should go ahead and become the primary lease holders of this space .
We have sat down together as a community and talked about various ideas for missional and cultural engagement using this space. We have thought about using it on 1st Fridays as an Art Gallery, 3rd Fridays as a Music Venue, a place for a "school of the arts" (music lessons, art lessons, dance lessons, etc..), place for ESL classes, Toddler Story time, partnering with various Non-profits, various events like a Reel Spirituality Night, or a Doubt Night, eventually holding our Public Worship gatherings there, and also subleasing it out to various communities and individuals as a means of paying for the space. (If we promote it well it's quite possible that we could break even and not spend any of our own money for rent, or even make some money.)
There are some challenges with the space. Raising the money to furnish the space, Raising the funds to cover the first month's payment including the Security Deposit, no one currently in our Core Group currently lives in the city of Lancaster, and there is currently a group that is meeting there on Sunday mornings (not a challenge right now as we are still planning on meeting at my house until we grow our core group a little larger).
On Sunday we will be meeting for our Core Group Worship time and taking some time to pray, listen to God, and discern whether this is God's leading for our community. I believe we probably won't find a better deal anywhere and especially one in which we might be actually able to make some money. But please pray for us as we discern together the future of Veritas and using this space for the Kingdom of God and for missional and cultural engagement.