Rev. Jamie Kingsbury meant to close Lord’s Gym for three quick months. The pause ended up being 18 months long. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it allowed the host facility, New Life Friends Church, the breathing room it needed to consider its mission, its expenses and its community’s needs.
Now, thanks to some major donations from folks who want to stay anonymous, Kingsbury said, Lord’s Gym is up and running again. Its aims are more modest than they used to be, but Kingsbury is satisfied that things are growing in a way that’s healthy and sustainable for the New Life Friends congregation and for the Rose Village neighborhood.
Before the place shut down, it was a multifaceted community center, gymnasium and food pantry that welcomed anybody who walked in the door. Which they did, every day. Feeding them all became a bit much for a small congregation in a big, old building that was facing huge repair bills, Kingsbury said.
In fall of 2013, Kingsbury told The Columbian that he was facing $300,000 in critical building needs plus an operating cost of approximately $10,000 per month. “We’ve been continuously pouring money into our ministry, not into our facilities,” he said. “We have handed out and handed out.”
New Life Friends Church is a big brick box just north of the corner of Fourth Plain and Grand. Built as a church, it also spent 20 years as Uncle Milt’s Pipe Organ Pizza Company, a beloved restaurant and neighborhood hangout that closed in 1999.
After that, the church and Lord’s Gym moved in. Angels of God, a separate nonprofit, handled the always-busy food service. When things started getting tight, a generous donor spearheaded a huge kitchen upgrade that brought in a total of $100,000 in commercial freezers, stoves, steam tables and more.
But the gleaming new kitchen couldn’t save a tired old building. In 2013, after polling his congregation and considering his cash flow, Kingsbury made the unhappy decision to close down everything but the church itself.
“In the past, we had a total open-door policy,” he said. “We adopted the whole area, but it was too much. We had to pull back on that and get more intentional about what we were doing.”
New life
Today the building sports a new roof, many completed repairs, and a kitchen that’s plenty busy once more. Rumors that the facility had just been “collecting dust” are false, Kingsbury said. There’s even a new state-funded preschool classroom here.
Attending the area’s “faith-based coffee” networking meetings — where churches, public agencies, nonprofits and school put their heads together to build community and solve problems — got Kingsbury connected with local organizers of the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, a public kindergarten-readiness program that includes preschool instruction, family support and child nutrition.
That’s where Sandy Stevens comes in. She used to be a volunteer for Lord’s Gym; now she’s back as a paid cook for the new onsite, five-days-per-week ECEAP program here.
“The kids are great. It’s nice to see them developing,” Stevens said. They’re working on skills like using utensils and employing manners at the family-style table, she said. She’s thrilled to be able to put the kitchen back to good use, she added.
“It’s ironic,” Kingsbury said. “So many people said, ‘Don’t partner with the government.’ But that classroom is doing great work.”
Lord’s Gym is plenty busy with other activities, too. There’s 6 p.m. Tuesday night basketball for kids, coached by adults from multiple Christian organizations, with a hot meal and faith message when play is done, Kingsbury said. It usually attracts as many as 35 participants ages 7 to 13 on a given Tuesday, Kingsbury said. There’s been homework tutoring too, offered by a teacher in the Evergreen school district.
There are recovery meetings just about every night for people kicking drugs and alcohol, he said. Lord’s Gym continues to operate offsite residential homes for men and for women in recovery, he added. There’s a Spanish-speaking church that holds services here three times per week, he said.
“We’re not 100 percent back, but we’re growing. This is a great place for all these things,” he said. “The Lord called an amazing timeout for this property. We didn’t know it, but it’s what we needed.”
