Unlocking our Future

Keys carry a great deal of symbolism with them. They represent closed doors, denial, being shut out, rejected, excluded. But they also evoke thoughts of gaining access, showing the way, a revealing, a fresh start.

That is what I felt like when our new landlord handed me a fresh new set of keys to our new office. Access has been granted to our new place and we have the freedom to do with it what we want. We also have been given access to use this facility to glorify God and make him known. I pray we use the keys we've been given to show others the way to the doors of heaven.

Working Day

Last Friday was a big day for the office move. Though we still have items at our old place that need to be moved, we asked staff instead to help us set up our new office. And boy, did we have help. At times it has been hard to recruit staff and friends to help us move our office, but last Friday was not one of those days. To give proper credit to those that came, I want to thank you all for giving so willingly of your time and talent to help us see this vision fulfilled.

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Holly painting in fear of the ever-watchful eye--me.

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Josh doing what he does best--smilling.

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Joe took his work very seriously.

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Cas and Leslie trying to get a grasp on the concept of work.

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Making good use of the receptionist area.

That's What She Said

This week Cas took some time to put her feelings and thoughts on the office move into writing. I want to invite you to check out her blog and hear how she is experiencing God in this process.

http://cascache.blogspot.com/2006/07/high-wire.html

Moving Days

The process of moving our Regional Office has been complex and generated many tasks for me and those that are helping. There are businesses that need to be contacted, services that need to be changed, communication that needs to happen, furniture that needs to be moved, a design that needs to be created, people that need to be gathered, money that needs to be raised; on and on the list goes. Even though all of these tasks need to be done, many of them don't make you feel like you're actually moving--neither ahead nor physically.

But there have been a few tasks that have made me feel like this office move is really going to happen. One of these is moving our furniture, equipment and supplies from our old location to our new one. Last Friday and today we had a chance to take some big steps forward by moving furniture, equipment and supplies. It was a lot of hard work and there weren't as many helping hands as I had hoped for, but it feels good to have cleared out our current space and moved into our new one. It's like getting ready to go on a trip and then actually getting into the car and traveling. We are on our way there.

The Industrial Look

Bob & Cas have a friend named Sandy, who is an office layout advisor--just the person we need to help us design this office. She flew into Portland last weekend and spent two days with me going through our new office, figuring out how best to arrange the space we have available. Together we came up with what I think is a good layout and design for our new place.

One thing we decided on was the look and feel of the place. This was important to establish, since it determines what our final office design will look like. We thought about going with a fancy office look or a casual one or an........industrial one. This last style was the one that both her and the Office Design Team thought would look best and give us the most possibilities to work with in the future. It also gives us the best run for our money and is appealing to college students.

More, more, more...

As I mentioned in my post on July 21st, we have changed some of our expectations and goals for getting the office setup and finished. Here are the three main areas we discussed while talking about the new office. We need more time, more help and more money!

Timeline: After re-evaluating our goals and vision for the new office, we are now looking at having the office set up by September with the understanding that it might take until December to really design the place the way we envision it.

Help: We need to recruit more helping hands to get this job done. The problem of sticking with our timeline is complicated by the fact that nearly all office staff are gone for the summer, leaving us with little resources to finish the job. Another benefit of involving others is that it will create a sense of ownership among all office staff, not just the Design Team.

Finances: Originally we were hoping to renovate our office to the tune of $5,000. Once Anita and I started looking at used office furniture, it became apparent that we were grossly underestimating our costs. Now we are shooting for a budget of over $10,000 but under $15,000. Where will this money come from? Don't know yet, but I have a feeling it will be God that supplies it.

Curbing Our Expectations

Whenever there is change that is welcomed, it is easy to get excited and ambitious about all the things that need to happen in light of it. Such was the case with our Regional Office move. Back in May when Bob, Cas, Matt and I talked about the changes that needed to happen, our goal was to finish by August 1st--our official move-in day. Since then we have realized that many things we set out to do cannot be accomplished in the alloted timeframe.

As I met with the newly established Office Design Team last week, there was a common theme in our discussions--"we don't have enough"--time, man-power or money. In light of this realization, we needed to backtrack a bit, re-evalute our vision and goals for the office move and set some new timelines for our work to be finished. We had to curb our expectations.