St. John Neumann dedicates new Faith & Family Center

On the week­end of June 5–6, St. John Neu­mann Catholic Church ded­i­cated a new Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter. Rev­erend Pastor

Seven to eight hun­dred peo­ple were wit­ness to the ded­i­ca­tion bless­ing of the new 21,000 square-foot, two-story Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter. Father David Size­more began the cer­e­mony thank­ing the many parish vol­un­teers who have worked over the past sev­eral years to get to this point begin­ning with the Long Range Plan­ning Com­mit­tee lead by Phil Rob­lee and John Pow­ers. This com­mit­tee sur­veyed our parish­ioners and com­mit­tees to deter­mine our needs now and into the future.

A sub­com­mit­tee of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, the Build­ing Com­mit­tee con­tin­ued the project. Sherry Whitacre, a vol­un­teer project man­ager; and Bob Scott, Parish Busi­ness Man­ager; along with Father Size­more met weekly with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Archi­tect for the Project, M&A and the builder, Elford, Inc. over the past year. Appre­ci­a­tion was also shown for the Cam­paign Chairs: Don and Jeanne Postiy; Neal and Michele Niklaus; and Jackie Sut­ton, parish Devel­op­ment Direc­tor. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of parish groups served refreshments.

Father Size­more, noted, “It is so appro­pri­ate that we are ded­i­cat­ing our New Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter on the Solem­nity of the Most Holy Trin­ity. For indeed, our spir­i­tual jour­ney, young and old, as indi­vid­u­als, as mar­ried cou­ples, as fam­i­lies and as a reli­gious com­mu­nity of Roman Catholic Chris­tians is about our search for God; our never-ending quest to know him in ever deeper ways, to come to love him inti­mately in the places of our hearts, and to share him abun­dantly with each other … all so we can take what we encounter here – the very per­sons of the one Tri­une God, into our fam­i­lies, neigh­bor­hoods, schools and places of work, into our cul­ture and soci­ety, and make dis­ci­ples of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is why we have responded to God’s call to build the new Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter. May God bless all who have sac­ri­ficed to build this place where God can be sought, encoun­tered in both mind and heart, and shared with the world beyond our parish bound­aries. And may God bless all who will enter through the doors of the Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter for gen­er­a­tions to come; may they come to know God, love him and serve him in this life and for­ever and hap­pily in the life to come.”

St. John Neu­mann Parish is a part of the Colum­bus Dio­cese and has over 1,100 fam­i­lies and just fewer than 3,000 indi­vid­ual Catholics. To assist parish­ioners in grow­ing their faith, the Parish has added and expanded pro­grams for reli­gious edu­ca­tion, faith for­ma­tion, spir­i­tual growth and social activ­i­ties. The new facil­i­ties will com­ple­ment these numer­ous pro­grams for youth and adults.

The Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter is a mul­ti­pur­pose space that can accom­mo­date up to 325 peo­ple seated at tables on the upper level, with 10 class­rooms for reli­gious edu­ca­tion and group meet­ings on the lower level, a new kitchen, a two-stop ele­va­tor, choir prac­tice room and nursery.

Ren­o­va­tion of the exist­ing parish hall includes sub­di­vid­ing 2,725 square feet of the first floor to cre­ate parish offices and upgrades to 2,341 square feet of the base­ment level to cre­ate five meet­ing rooms and a coun­selor office, to be com­plete by the end of sum­mer. The project was designed by M + A Archi­tects and is being con­structed by Elford, Inc., both com­pa­nies are based out of Columbus.

The project is being funded by a Cap­i­tal Cam­paign titled “Faith, Fam­ily and Tra­di­tion – Build­ing Today for Tomor­row”. Any gifts or pledges col­lected over the approx­i­mately $4.5 mil­lion dol­lar build­ing and ren­o­va­tion cost, will go toward expand­ing the cur­rent church build­ing, built in 2004, which is the next step in the 10-year Mas­ter Plan.

St. John Neu­mann Parish, founded in 1977, is a Catholic Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity cel­e­brat­ing 35 years of ser­vice to God and neigh­bor. New parish­ioners are always wel­come. Father Size­more has been the parish pas­tor since 2005.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jun 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.