08/22/2018
One of the lessor known or obvious ministries the Collegedale Church supports is our Collegedale Memorial Park. Unusual as it may seem to identify our cemetery as a ministry, it plays an enormous role in supporting our grieving members in their times of loss and crisis and during the often long grieving and healing time. Over the years, our cemetery volunteers and church staff have been able to provide a connection and a space to assist in that healing process.
During the years of my close involvement in that ministry, serving as the Church Administrator, I had often imagined having a beautiful chapel area for our memorial services and then for family members to come to later for quiet reflection and to remember the good times. Over those years, it also became apparent that having services beside an open grave created not only difficulties for our older family members to access the graveside but also posed liability and safety issues. Most cemeteries over the years have ceased allowing open graveside services because of those very issues.
One day, in a casual conversation, I shared the idea and concept with my good friends the Whiddens. Within days, they brought me a check for a significant contribution providing the incentive to begin the process of making this become reality. Thank you Chuck and Jewell!
Another casual conversation, sharing the dream with Jack and Betty McKee, who have a number of family members resting in our memorial park, brought us the surprise of a significant gift that covered the majority of the estimated costs. Ms. Betty mentioned to me that the gift represented a thank you to God’s graciousness in their own lives providing health and wellness. What a tribute to His goodness! Huge thank you to both of you.
I met and shared the dream with my friend Heidi Hefferlin, the daughter of Ray and Inelda Hefferlin, long time pioneers in our church and at Southern Adventist University. Her excitement grew at the chance of helping create something memorable especially now that her dad is resting nearby. As always, she put on her Hefferlin and Kronenberg Architect’s creative hat and did a wonderful job of turning those sketches into a working design. Thank you Heidi! As she recently expressed to me, “Dad would have loved this!”
Thanks to church member, Greg Owen of GL Owens Construction and others, the chapel is now complete and the occupancy permit is in hand. One of the local funeral home workers told us there is no burial chapel at any cemetery in the greater Chattanooga area that even comes close in it’s beauty and functionality.
The chapel is open air, designed in a pergola style, with timbers and rock matching the entry gates. Two thirds are covered by a roof giving shelter from both sun and rain. The rest will eventually be covered by vines. The one solid wall, forming a backdrop for memorial services, has a cross shaped void which is illuminated after dark from the outside. The light glowing through the space symbolizing the hope of the cross which gives us the light of His Grace and fills those voids left in our hearts by the losses of our loved ones. It provides a tangible reminder of the promise that they will be restored. As He promises in Isaiah 60:20; “Your sun shall no longer go down, nor shall your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended.”
--Wolf Jedamski
