Hopewell Presbyterian Church
Plain Language Building Use Policy
Dear neighbor,
We are delighted that you are interested in using our building for something. As a Church of Jesus Christ, we want to serve our neighbors and help our community, so we are glad when outside groups come here to meet or have an event. There are really only two rules we want you to bear in mind while using our building. Jesus himself said they were the two "greatest commandments".
1. Love God with everything you've got. Please don't do anything in our building that would displease God.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself. Please treat our church home as well as you would treat your home.
We won’t charge you anything to use our building…but we want you to know that it cost us over $100,000 to maintain our building last year. That includes maintenance costs, our hard working sexton, insurance, utilities and things like that. If it is within your means to make a donation to help us out with those costs, we would be very grateful. (Your donations will be tax-deductible, of course.)
We do have a special request regarding insurance. If you are bringing a large group or using the kitchen, we ask that you either get a special event liability policy or give us a copy of your homeowner’s insurance policy. This will help us keep our insurance rates down.
If you are planning on having your wedding here, please bear in mind that our pastor will be spending about ten hours on it, both in preparation and during the event. People usually give an 'honorarium' to help with that. (An honorarium is a sum of money honoring the effort put in). If you aren't sure what amount would be appropriate, you could think about how much you are paid for ten working hours. People usually also give an honorarium for the organist and sexton, to acknowledge their extra effort too; they probably each put in about six hours.
Honoraria for funerals or memorial services work pretty much the same way, but they take less time, about three hours each for the pastor, organist and sexton.
If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to go to our website at www.hopewellpresbyterian.org to find out more about our church. We would love to have you join us, get to know us, and become part of our Christian community. And if after reading this, you do want to use our building, please contact our secretary Lucy at 609-466-0758, or by e-mail. She will be happy to answer any other questions you might have and will work with you to meet your needs.
Sincerely,
Pastor Mike Capron
and the members of Hopewell Presbyterian Church
