Cookeville’s Heavenly Host Lutheran Church Expanding Facilities

Cookeville’s Heavenly Host Lutheran Church is planning for a two-phase expansion.

The church operates a K-12 school and facilitates weekly worships. Pastor Andrew Smith said growth of both groups lead to the plans for three new classrooms and a new multipurpose room.

“What you would call our elementary and middle school has continued to grow. Our early childhood program was already full, and we needed the space for that, so we needed the space,” Smith said. “And then on the church side, we already space. The current fellowship hall that we have is really too small.”

Smith said the church voter’s assembly met last week and approved the fundraising campaign for the work. Smith said it is an exciting time with the expansion being in discussion over the past 10 years.

“We’ve had different versions of this plan in the works for probably over ten years,” Smith said. “And, we have worked the process within the congregation in different iterations. We’ve had ups and downs like any congregation has, and we will get close to starting. We were close to starting this last time, but then, COVID hit. So, we used that time to recalibrate.”

Smith said the multi-purpose room would be used for fellowship and sporting activities of the church. Smith said the classrooms would likely be used for K-12 or early learning.

“About every 20 years or so, the church has made progress and has added different facilities to keep up with growth,” Smith said. “It is certainly time for us to take the next step. About 20 years ago we finished an expansion in our current worship facility, our sanctuary where we expanded that. About that time just part of that expanded our school facilities, as well. It was time for us to reinvest.”

Smith the expansion does not have a start date since the funds need to be raised to get started.