With doubling our size over the past year, we have voted to relocate to a larger location for our church.

We now have 60+ people (including 15 catechumens) in a 1200 sqft storefront that we can’t keep cool and don’t have room for our two church school classes. It’s a good problem to have.

The new location is 18 minutes north of our current location near the intersection of Sand Lake Road and Orange Blossom Trail. This location is approximately 3,200 sq ft and was already set up as a church with offices/classrooms, 2 bathrooms, a fellowship hall area, and a worship space designed to accommodate 150 people. The rent is double the cost of what we are currently paying for roughly triple the space we currently have. God willing, we will be moving next month to the new location.

How you can help:

To fuel the growth of St. John’s, we are seeking to raise $40,000 to offset the cost of relocating to this larger site.

• Of this, $36,000 would be the difference to our budget for one year’s rent in the new location ($3000 difference per month x 12 months),
• $2,500 is the amount to break our current lease, and
• $1,500 would be our signage budget for the new location.

We ask that all those who care about the development of St. John’s from a mission into a church to pray that God’s will is done in relation to our location and to make a tax-deductible donation to help with the relocation costs.

There are two ways to make a donation:

1. Email Fr. David at frdavidgalloway@gmail.com or SJTM Treasurer Erich Bunofsky at erichbunofsky@gmail.com to make a pledge you intend to fulfill within 30 days. Make sure to put the words “Relocation Pledge” in the subject line of the email.
2. Click on this Tithely link or scan the QR code below to give directly now. Make sure that you include your name and email in the donation to receive your donation receipt for taxes.

Fr. David’s sermon on Stepping out in Faith (8/25/24)

Photos from Listing

Questions and Answers

Why are we looking at this property?

Over the past sixteen months of searching for potential new homes for the church, most of the properties we’ve found for rent will not rent to churches, are not suitable in size for our needs (hard to find spaces between 2,000-5,000 sq ft), or are not in our area of operations. In those sixteen months, we identified three locations:
1. A Baptist Church for sale in Davenport we could not line up financing before it was sold.
2. A strip mall on 192 near Medieval Times that the owner showed us and then decided they did not want to rent to a church.
3. This location on OBT in a commercial quadriplex with churches, medical offices, law offices, and other businesses. It is 1.2 miles further north than our targeted area, but is one of the only suitable places we have found in many months of searching.

Can we afford the move?

In the past year as our attendance increased 63% on an average month in 2024 vs 2023, our average giving per adult per Sunday has decreased from $85/adult/Sunday to $48/adult/Sunday. Generally speaking, $50/adult/Sunday is considered a standard figure in healthy Orthodox Churches. Going by that estimate, we need to have approximately 75 adults on an average Sunday to make sure we are meeting this increased budget. For June our average Sunday attendance was 65, July was 60, and August was 57. This is within our reach, especially with having new visitors every week, but this is also why we are fundraising one year’s worth of increased rent expenses to ease the cost of growth.

Is the property safe?

According to most crime maps, it’s slightly safer (D rating) than our current location (D- rating). When asking the landlord if the area was safe, the response was “We have 5 churches is this property, they have grown their services with no complaints. There is security in the complex, so no concerns about anything”. So I would imagine it would be very similar to our current location, but larger and nicer (see the video below).

What happens if we exceed our funding goal?

If we raise more than $40,000, the extra will go into building out the new location by expanding the iconostasis, putting in a small kitchen, and outfitting the three classrooms and startup bookstore.