July 27, 2025

Dear Wesley Monumental Church Family,

Life is always messy and unpredictable. It’s always something. As much as I find myself hoping to have everything in its place, running smoothly, and coasting a little bit, it never seems to work that way. The moment we have everything in order, something causes some disorder, which then leads to some reordering.

Many of you are now aware that we once again find ourselves in a state of unexpected disorder. Having a beautiful old historic sanctuary is wonderful until we run into it being “old.” Early Tuesday morning, we became aware that a section of our sanctuary ceiling broke loose and fell, causing some significant damage. The blessing is that no one was in the sanctuary.

While we are still in the process of consulting with architects, engineers, and construction experts, what we know today is that we will be out of our sanctuary for an extended period of time and will be entering into another construction project to repair and prepare our sanctuary for many more years of worship. It will undoubtedly be costly and inconvenient, yet we have constantly risen to the challenges that life has brought to us at Wesley.

During my tenure here, we have undergone several major renovations (as some of you may remember, including one very complicated one), a COVID pandemic, a denominational implosion, and now this. But in every case, by God’s grace and your faithfulness and generosity, we have come out of the disorder into new places of reordering and blessing. Through it all, we have continued to grow and reach people with the good news of the love of God in Christ, and I am confident we will do so once again.

In the meantime, we will have our 8:45 a.m. worship service in our Fellowship Hall (we have plenty of practice after the elevator renovation we just finished). For the next three weeks, we will hold our 11:00 service in the synagogue sanctuary of Congregation Mickve Israel (just behind us across Drayton Street). They have been such gracious hosts in the past and once again extended their hospitality. After that, we will move our 11:00 service back to the Fellowship Hall and likely add a third service at 9:45 a.m. to accommodate our numbers.

Please pray for our leadership as we “work the problem” and remember to be thankful for our many blessings.

Peace,

Ben Martin

Update: August 7, 2025

Dear Wesley Monumental Church Family,

This Sunday, August 10, we will continue to worship in our Fellowship Hall at 8:45 a.m. and in the Mickve Israel Synagogue at 11:00 a.m.  As many of you know, the Mickve Israel Synagogue seats around 300 people, which is smaller than our normal school year 11:00 worship attendance.  We are in the process of putting together a third morning worship option during the Sunday School hour to spread our crowds out enough to seat everyone.  This is also the reason we are having children dropped off at Children’s Worship before the service begins (so as not to have to take the children across Drayton Street and to create a little more seating capacity).  We still have capacity for more people at the 8:45 a.m. worship service (we can seat about 200 people) and would encourage those who can to attend the early service this week to help balance our crowd between 8:45 and 11:00. Thank you for your help as we navigate this interim period of the restoration of our sanctuary ceiling.

Peace,

Ben Martin