Our Story....

A few years ago on a whim, the church at 165 Main Street became for a while a Christmas shop. Then it was a open mic coffee house. Then Community Builders was conceived in the minds of several like minded folks. As spring unfolded into summer a Strawberry Festival was born and that led to a Harvest Fest and then Christmas Around the Corner all managed by the Community Builder’s Team . The church Chicken BBQ’s with the Super Bowl, May yard sales and Christmas Nativity reminding us of a long-ago story, and Holy Week Cross telling the Easter Story were important to the life of the church and community. The Schaghticoke Food Pantry was hatched then Community Life Support, our 501c3 nonprofit, was formed from and because of these wonderful experiences. This last year with COVID taking over our once safe world, we learned how to provide online auctions which allowed us to keep in touch with you, our supporters. You, the community have been here to support us in and through all these community events, and we can’t begin to express how thankful we are.

Last year we began a sort of multi-year journey to transform our many spaces – modernizing and revitalizing as we went. Our goal was to open the building up to the multiple possibilities to serve, nurture and provide for the much-loved community. We had already added the Schaghticoke Food Pantry which now serves approximately 100 people per month. We redesigned our dining hall into a regal space for family gatherings, parties, conferences, movie nights and dinners.

The success and generous support of the community encouraged us to keep moving ahead. We deconstructed our old kitchen and then made that space into a fresh new space for the Pantry. That choice lead to imagining a kitchen that could be more than a church kitchen- it could be a certified commercial space for the foodie entrepreneurs in our community to use for making their products to sell. And so that adventure began with a burst of carpentry work and slowed to a stop as we waited on fabrication and fans for our fire suppression exhaust system. We are still in a slow motion experience.

In the middle of the kitchen redesign, our furnace became unsafe and required immediate attention. We are so very grateful to a friend of the church who made a challenge donation and overwhelmed by the support we received to help afford the change out of the furnace. Now we have a super system that uses propane and is environmentally good. We removed the old oil tank with out an issue. This brings us to present day. We applied for help from our Presbytery and did receive enough funds to cover the cost in full when added to what was raised. You, the generous loving community helped us do this very important task. Thank you.

As of today, the kitchen is slowly progressing and we know there will be end costs which we did not anticipate at the start. And along with that we have been challenged by our stain glass windows- as they slowly crumble away. Part of the plan was to redesign the sanctuary space into a multi use space that will support the branches of Community Life Support. We will retain part of the space for worship as the primary use, but the redesign includes new environmentally friendly and heat retaining windows- repairs of the 100 year old walls and ceilings, new paint, changing out lights and fans, removing pew seating and the 50 year old carpet. What will it look like? Who will be able to use it? How can it be used? It will be an open space for you to use, with a variety of seating possibilities; a space for yoga and Tai Chi, technology which will allow for conference meetings including the Presbytery as some point, with dividing ability to provide privacy and quiet work space. We want it to be fresh and inviting and welcoming to all who enter.

Giving Tuesday is a first for Community Life Support. And we are excited by the campaign we have put together. Think back to ice bucket challenges and how folks were called out by friends usually on Facebook to be a receiver of the ice bucket all in support of ALS research. Well we aren’t doing ice buckets, instead we want to engage you, our generous, loving community, with peer to peer challenges. It will begin on December 1st with a challenge to 3 of my friends to donate to the Peer to Peer Challenge; they will meet my challenge and then extend the challenge to three of their friends and on it goes. We will have a teen challenge working as well. We hope the local businesses will come on board and challenge each other, challenge their patrons to share generously in support of the Community Life Support Building Transformation.

Giving Tuesday kick off on December 1, will build our base funds to support a program of progress capital campaign type of participation over the next 2-3 years as our design comes together, but it all begins with you.

When the challenge comes to you, meet it with your generous heart and work with us to transform our building into a center for the community. Know that big or small, peer to peer, one challenge at a time, pass it on, it will get done.

Schaghticoke United Church Renovation Fund

By Community Life Support. Inc

Schaghticoke United Church Renovation Fund

Reno fund

Team Members