If you want to see how Senior Pastor Lori Bievenour worked a bathroom blessing into the service on October 24, 2021, take a look here. (It opens the St. Peter's YouTube channel in a new window about 50 minutes into the service.; you might need to click through an advertisement.) As Lori says, its a litle bit messy, a little bit "how did that go together again?," and a little bit beautiful. Just like St. Peter's.
Our bathroom evolution began with conversations several years ago and then a challenge from Pastor Lori to be bold in figuring out who we are as a church. If we are truly living our Covenant of Welcome, we needed to extend that to our physical buildings.
Our building is 50 years old. Our main bathrooms were inaccessible (we had to direct people to a back hallway for accessible bathrooms) and were binary (men and women) and were not family friendly (no space to help a child in a stall, no changing table).
In early 2019, a team was formed and work began to determine options and generate ideas on how to renovate, rebuild, and evolve our bathrooms. The process was delayed by the pandemic in early 2020 and then faced new fundraising goals as the cost of construction most than doubled the original quote.
