● The Church in Richmond has been granted a provisional occupancy permit

Praise and thank the Lord for answering our prayers!

After inspection on Thursday and a re-inspection on Friday (June 15), the City has granted us a 90-day provisional permit. 

We are allowed to use the meeting hall beginning on June 17, except for areas where deficiencies have been found, mainly pertaining to safety issues.

The provisional permit actually works to our advantage, because it highlights many safety features that were overlooked, missing, or inadequately installed. For a building such as ours, which is intended to be occupied by hundreds of people at certain times, the safety code requires the builder to provide the right height for a balcony wall, handrails for steps leading to the entrance doors, sealing of gaps between concrete walls and along the sides of stairways for smoke separation and fire protection, tactile and visual contrast on steps to alert people to changes in height, and a few other minor items. The contractor did all the necessary work on Friday to clear most of the deficiencies. By 5:30 p.m., the City inspector came on site, after office hours on his own time, to go through the building again and gave us the conditional approval. The outstanding deficiencies will be corrected within the shortest possible time this weekend and next week.

The first use of the meeting hall this coming Lord's day (June 17) will give us time to test all the facilities and features of the building and take note of what is lacking or what needs to be adjusted, improved, replaced, or added, so that we can be prepared for forthcoming conferences, trainings, and blending with the saints from other localities. 


The following pictures show brothers and sisters who were cleaning up the rooms and kitchen; some brothers were setting the seats in the main meeting hall.