A Letter from the Deacons

Hello HBC!

As the Deacon board our priority is to maintain the buildings and grounds at both the HUB and our church building in Gasport. As time progresses, the three of us, with Pastor Jon’s guidance, try our best to keep things up-to-date and in a working order to the best of our capabilities! If you didn’t get a chance to check it out before we stopped meeting, the bathroom in the children’s wing is in working order as well as the sink in the nursery; long over due but we got there!

With all that being said, typically we would hold a Spring cleanup day, which we had scheduled and put on the calendar for a few weeks before Mother’s Day. This was something we addressed rather early and we felt like we had a good handle on the cleanup this year… And then COVID-19 hit. We have had a few Zoom meetings to discuss what spring cleanup and preparation for opening looks like in the future. It’s our goal to have the outside as well as the inside of our building looking as good as possible when we are finally able to meet again!  

Currently our plan is to have an online signup for outside cleanup. We will leave the tool shed to the left of our lower entrance openwith a small assortment of hand tools and a wheelbarrow there for anyone to use if they feel welcome. We just ask that you put all the tools you take out back in the shed when you are done and make sure the door is closed, but Not Locked. You are also welcome to bring your own tools if you prefer.

Our main focus is on the 8 flower beds throughout our church property. If you see something else you’d like to cleanup or work on please feel free. We will have a staggered sign up, dividing days and times. Each day will have a “morning” and “afternoon” time slot. Obviously you can start at whatever time works best for your schedule. If you do sign up for a morning session, we would ask that you are cleaned up by 3 pm in case someone has signed up for the afternoon slot.  If you would like to signup for an entire day, you are more than welcome to do so! The flower beds will be labeled accordingly and the signup will reflect that.

We are also breaking the cleanup into 3 main jobs, “weeding,” “mulching,” and “adopting”.

1. First we would like to weed all the flower beds, including the stone bed on the West side of the building.
2. Once we have completed that, we will begin to mulch the beds. There will be two piles of mulch dropped (which will be delivered before any work begins on the flower beds), one on the upper level near the circle and another at the lower level near the left side of the building. Please spread Preen (provided in the tool shed) and then a layer of mulch.
3. The last step is to adopt a flower bed. The general concept is to take responsibility for that particular flower bed for the summer. That would involve mostly weeding the beds as they begin to overgrow, it’s inevitable. 

We have split things up to try and minimize the work for families but still accomplish our goal.  If you feel that you’re family has time to signup to accomplish all three jobs on one or many flowerbeds feel free to sign up! Or if you’d rather just accomplish one of these jobs with your family that is great too! We want to give the congregation an opportunity to serve as much as they feel lead to, during a time when we aren’t sure what serving our church looks like in the near future. If you have any questions in regards to the process or the tasks, please reach out to one of the deacons! Thank you so much for the participation and effort you guys are putting into our church building!

Finally, the church will be unavailable to working crews throughout the day. Even if Pastor Jon is there, we ask that if you refrain from entering the church for any reason; this includes members with a church key. If you must use the bathroom in case of an emergency, we ask that you limit building travel and only use the downstairs doors and downstairs bathrooms. We really want to honor rules set in place as well as the health of our church staff that uses the building on a daily bases.

Thank you for understanding – and don’t forget to hydrate!

HBC Deacon Board