deconstructing church

Here are some before and after photos that our senior pastor snapped yesterday of our church building getting demolished. Apparently they've just instituted some new policies today that would require a longer permit process for demolishing a building, but yesterday these weren't yet in force and it was taken down, as I hear it, in a matter of minutes. The auditorium that was torn down hasn't been used since the September earthquake, when some bricks from a supporting wall came crashing through our offices, but it had been hoped until last week that it would still be able to be repaired. Actually, the insurance company was still hoping this - the rest of us wanted the old converted building to go so that we could rebuild one better suited to our needs. We've been using our much smaller youth hall building for the last six months, which has proven to be impressively earthquake-proof; this is what we expect to move back into in a month or two. The plan until then hasn't yet been finalized.


After: Just the Youth Hall

Before: Youth Hall (left) and Auditorium (right)



-Rachel