Gateway Bible Church associate pastor Dan Bowman was found standing on a stepladder this week with a paint roller in hand, putting the final touches on a new layer of paint in a bathroom.
Change is afoot at both the church and Baymonte Christian School, which share a campus. During the summer and early fall, the church was re-roofed and classrooms were renovated to accommodate a growing community of 300 adults and close to 100 children each Sunday. About 350 students attend Baymonte in kindergarten through eighth grade.
“A lot of young families come to Gateway,” Bowman said. “We want parents to know we care about their kids and about their families.”
The nondenominational church got more kid-friendly last week by opening up a handful of refurbished classrooms with various themes.
The classrooms display artist Dave Ellenwood’s murals and designs on the walls. One classroom is decorated in a medieval theme, and another has a small-scale rock-climbing wall.
The church, which celebrates its 54th anniversary this month, moved all of its Sunday-school classrooms from scattered buildings to the central horseshoe-shaped courtyard. In the move, Baymonte’s kindergarten classrooms moved to another part of campus, and the fifth graders moved to the middle-school campus.
“It’s about new beginnings,” Bowman said. “It was a delicate transition that turned out to be a positive transition, I think, for everybody.”
Besides the upgrade to the classrooms, Gateway is in the process of cutting down 14 large trees behind the church office and several Baymonte classrooms. The 35- to 40-year-old nonnative cottonwood trees had reached their lifespan and had become a safety hazard, Bowman said. Within in the past year, falling branches have hit two vehicles and broken a window, and one fell into a classroom.
“The trees are rotting (from the inside),” he said. “How long was it going to be until one fell over?”
A tree crew from Teen Challenge cut down the trees last week.
“They’re just super-overgrown and have had problems with limb failures,” tree cutter Ryan Gomm said.
Gateway plans to plant new trees behind the campus, including redwoods and oaks.
