For years we have struggled with these three problems:

1. 1. Our kitchen does not conform to current standards. We serve many meals, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, out of our kitchen, and these are important to us both as cultural and social events and as fund raisers.
   2. We need more storage. We are actually remarkably good at using our space efficiently: the carts under the stage utilise that space completely, and that we can run our bazaar and rummage sales out of the closet sized room that goes by the name of Nursery is no small miracle. However, the only storage space left is the bell tower, and hauling things up and down the stairs is rather too arduous.
   3. We need an elevator or lift to connect the Sanctuary with coffee downstairs. Pushing a wheelchair or walker around the building, down the parking lot, and in through the back door is possible but unpleasant in rain or snow.

We then took a hard look at the kitchen problem. We considered rearranging cupboards, moving interior walls, every possible renovation plan. Every idea came up short. Realising that no renovation, however grand, would be sufficient led us to conclude that an expansion beyond our current walls is the only way to go.

Expansion allows us to solve all three problems in one frighteningly large project: Outside our current kitchen and around the corner under our front entrance we will excavate and build a second kitchen and a large new storage room. We will move dishwashing to the new kitchen and use the old kitchen for cooking only. This is obviously more hygienic and allows better traffic flow when we bring food out to the Church Hall and dirty dishes back for washing. The new storage room will allow us to install a lift in the small storage room that now contains the freezer.

Upstairs the lift will take a bite out of the Sanctuary: the northern half of the back wall (with the picture of H.R.H. Prince Henrik) will move a few feet in to line up with the overhang. We will lose one pew in the north side and the historical display cabinet in the narthex.

A general meeting on Sunday, July 25th, 2010, decided to split the project in three phases and to go ahead with Phase One: Excavating and building the base building.