Acclaimed naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin wrote, "It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."
Historically, our church has opened its doors to a variety of community engagement, whether it be the HOA meeting of University Acres, the weekly gathering of Narcotic Anonymous, or remote learning of LSU students and professors.
Over the last three years, UBC has navigated a conversation about creating stronger connections within our community by sharing our space. The Governing Board established the Space Usage Team to survey the congregational stakeholders on space needs, study space usage, and explore what it would look like to leverage our abundance campus to build a collaborative partnership.
Through the hard work of Cammie Davis, Leslie Kilpatrick, Aaron Biggers, and Kim Dunaway, and with the support of the Governing Board, the Space Usage Team has developed a comprehensive approach to building sustainable partnerships with the community through the sharing of our space and property to its fullest potential.
There are two types of space partnership: 1) One-Time Events, 2) Ongoing. A one-time event partner is a group that uses our facilities for a special event once. An ongoing partnership is a group that weekly or monthly uses our spaces for recurring opportunities.
The team has created a clarified list of space available for rent, a vetting process for potential space partners, and a fair schedule of fees. Every potential partner must apply, go through the approval process with the Space Usage Team, and pass a background check. In other words, every potential space partner will go through a fair and rigorous approach to ensure they are a good fit for UBC and our existing ministries.
The funds generated from the space partnership directly benefit the upkeep of our aging facilities and support the church's ministry budget.
The team will be implementing a marketing strategy to boost our reach and capacity for healthy partnerships in the coming weeks.
While the vetting process, schedule of fees, and categories of partnerships have officially launched, we have not publicly marketed the opportunity to the community. Nevertheless, the last six months has seen an increase of word of mouth recommendations that have come in the form of the LSU choir renting the sanctuary for ongoing practices, a weekly expecting moms fitness class, the weekly usage of the sports field by four sports teams, a monthly meeting of a mother’s grief-share group, the weekly meeting of a homeschool enrichment group, the weekly meeting of an LSU tai chi group lesson, and the daily meeting of the Palacios House of Art enrichment classes.
Check out the Space Partnership page at www.ubc-br.org/space-partnerships.
May we celebrate the excellent work of the many hands that helped bring us to this place. May we turn to prayer that God will open our hearts and facilities to develop incarnational opportunities to love our community.