BROOKINGS — Abundant Life Church is embarking on a dream for Brookings area youth: It’s called Sozo House.

Haley Zacharias, the church’s youth pastor and media coordinator described it as “that in-between place for them to come and truly rest, recharge, have adults who care about them without a list of things that they have to do or perform or be good enough. And take that back into their home life.” And Sozo House would be a Jesus-centered outreach.

The pastor explained that Sozo is a Greek word “with layers of meaning: saved, healed, delivered, made whole. We see it all through Scripture.” When she took the helm as youth pastor, “We decided to re-brand. … Not only is our goal for people to be saved in the knowledge of Jesus, but for it to impact their lives in the fact that they are well and healed and whole. We love the name and how it fits. Sozo House will be the home where these things can happen.”

Zacharias was a teacher for six years at Colman-Egan school system, teaching youth 12 to 18 years old, middle school through high school. She joined the Abundant Life staff about three years ago.

“A lot of us leaders felt the calling from God that we needed to add on for youth,” she explained. “We got our plans together with designArc. That took six to eight months.” She had been aware of the news about mental health crisis and schools reaching out for health. “That was after we had got some of this in motion,” she added. “We knew there was a need and the need became super-evident to everyone else in the community. So here we are.”

Zacharias explained that Sozo House will be a safe place. She also noted that parents are working, no one is at home during the day. And there is a lot of pressure on kids at what they have to accomplish at school and activities.

“A lot of them go home to an empty house and they don’t have a place to let everything down and be a kid,” she added. “It’s go, go, go. Get your homework done and succeed and make the team and go to practice.”

Spiritual aspect emphasized

Abundant Life Senior Pastor Joe Ganahl sees “lots of opportunities for young kids, students in our community that don’t have a spiritual aspect tied to them. Obviously as a church and as pastors we see that that’s one of the things that’s missing from our society.”

“We are five-part beings,” he explained. “We have  social, physical, intellectual, and emotional sides. We have groups that meet those needs; but we don’t have anybody that meets that spiritual aspect.

“We just feel like that’s part of what we are running into. We have kind of kicked God out of everywhere. If we’re really going to meet the needs of these kids, especially in their identity, the world is trying to put labels on people. We want them to know that they are loved by God, … that he has created them for an amazing purpose in this life, that they are not an accident.

“We don’t want to fill the gap of places like GAP — the Great Afterschool Place — or the Boys & Girls Club. But we want to bring something into the mix that involves Jesus. Because we truly believe — not only for our young people but for our world — there is no hope without Christ.”

Zacharias noted that “taking care of yourself spiritually helps you take care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.”

While Sozo House will operate under the umbrella of Abundant Life, it’s not per se bound to the church. All youth are welcome to come through Sozo’s doors.

Ganahl explained that Abundant Life was outgrowing itself relative to the youth it serves. About 40 youth now attending  Wednesday activities find themselves in a space that is “literally standing-room-only.” Those youth who attend “keep inviting friends and they keep inviting friends. It has become such a great place for them to be.”

“There’s purpose and identity here,” he explained. “We’ve got to figure out something before we even open the doors. It’s something that we just see as a community-wide — well, how many kids would we serve? Hundreds if not thousands of kids could benefit from something like this. It’s more than just a church youth group.”

The pastor explained that while there are “a lot of tremendous churches in our community … a lot of tremendous youth groups, they’re only open Wednesday nights 6 to 8 or whatever.” Initially Sozo House would be open several days a week — and even more “if staff and volunteers could be there for the kids.” Activities offered could include such things as games, nutrition, tutoring, and life skills.

Funding is the hinge point

 A key question now facing Abundant Life is: When can these things happen? “That’s our hinge point, is the fund-raising,” Zacharias explained. “As soon as we get the money we will be itching to break ground. We’re doing it debt-free. We’re not going to take out any loans; we’re going to get the money first.” And the money is: about $2.4 million total. Estimated cost of construction is about $1.9 million; estimated cost of furnishings is about $500,000.

Ganahl did note it would be possible to build the two-story structure in phases as the money is actually in-hand — as opposed to pledges.  For example, $1 million would allow for erecting the shell of the structure. As noted above, the architect for Sozo House is Brookings-based designArc Group.

“Pledges can be kind of shaky at times, especially in our world today,” the pastor  explained. “What we have been doing is reaching out initially to people who have large sums of money, people inside and outside the church. We see this as something that is not just an Abundant Life project; it’s a Brookings community project.”

The pastor added that he has also reached out people nationally to people who have no connection to the Brookings community; “but they care about people and they care about kids.”

A best-case scenario calls for continued fundraising through the rest of the year and getting a contractor and breaking ground in spring 2024.

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.