A little more than two years ago, Imagine Church and CitySpring Church joined forces to create NSPIRE Church and began conducting services once a week at Oak Trace Elementary School.
Now, after a multi-year fundraising campaign, NSPIRE is hosting a three-weekend grand opening at its new brick-and-mortar church at 18097 Sun Park Dr.
Part of an abandoned lumberyard, the once-decaying building was restored and began hosting services around Easter as work progressed. The building is now nearly complete and hosted the first in a series of grand-opening events Sept. 16. Other events are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Sept. 23 and Sept. 30. The Sept. 23 event will be a team-spirit Sunday and Sept. 30 will be superhero Sunday.
“We are a real diverse group of people with a broad spectrum of backgrounds, beliefs and experience with church,” Formation Pastor Brad Ruggles said. “That’s one of the things we love is we came together on the idea that we could be better together and we believe as a church community there’s a lot more to bring us together than divide us.”
The name NSPIRE was derived from the word spire.
“Spire literally means life, breath or wind,” Engagement Pastor Matt Gaylor said. “When you’re inspiring someone, you’re breathing life into them, and it’s our hope that when people come here, they feel like they’ve had life breathed into them.”
The pastors adopted the church name literally by breathing life into the lumberyard.
“It was an old, abandoned space and we were able to breathe life into this building,” Ruggles said. “It’s an ongoing example of breathing life into our church and our community.”
A coffee shop, a worship area, classrooms for different age groups and more are all housed in the new building. In the future, Ruggles and Gaylor hope students will study or spend time in the space.
For more, visit nspire.church.
