East Cobb Church

East Cobb Church donates new box truck to Simple Needs GA

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Simple Needs GA box truck

Submitted information and photo:

Members of East Cobb Church have responded to the pressing needs of the poor in Cobb County by buying Simple Needs GA a brand-new box truck for picking up and delivering furniture. 

In addition to the donation of the 16-foot GMC Savana box truck, the congregation also made a large financial donation that will cover the cost of insurance and maintenance for the vehicle over the course of its lifetime.  

More than 250 church members also purchased about 3,000 full-sized toiletries and other useful items for distribution by SNGA to shelter check-ins and people experiencing homelessness in Cobb County.  

Taken together, the gifts are by far the largest donation in the history of the Marietta-based nonprofit. 

As a result, SNGA will no longer need to spend large sums of money to rent box trucks for picking up and delivering furniture and household items as part of its Simple Household Needs program, said Brenda Rhodes SNGA Founder and President. 

“The donation of the box truck gives our volunteers much more capacity for picking up and delivering furniture as needed,” she noted. “We’ve already been making pickups and deliveries with the truck and have seen firsthand how being more efficient will allow us to help many more people over time.” 

Located at 2450 Lower Roswell Rd., East Cobb Church was founded in January 2020.  

The donation came as part of its first-ever “Be Rich” campaign, which gets its name from 1 Timothy 6:18 (“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”). 

The goal of the fundraising portion was to help SNGA with its furniture logistics challenges. “Our volunteers often had to scramble to find a way to get much-needed furniture and household items to our clients in Cobb County,” Rhodes noted. 

Initially, though, Pastor Jamey Dickens assumed the campaign would bring in enough money to buy the nonprofit a used pickup truck—not a far-more-expensive, brand-new box truck, he said. Dickens and Katie Peters, a pastoral counselor at East Cobb Church who coordinated the campaign, asked the church’s roughly 800 members to each donate at least $39.95. 

 The outpouring of generosity that resulted was remarkable, Dickens said. “The money just came pouring in,” he said.  

On October 23, East Cobb Church delivered the truck to SNGA’s Marietta warehouse near Cobb Parkway to the applause and tears of SNGA board members, volunteers and other contributors. 

Already deeply involved in community service, members of East Cobb Church were well aware of the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on the poor and were eager to answer the call when the Be Rich campaign was launched, Dickens said.   

“Our people deserve a major shout out and so does Katie, who did a fantastic job leading this effort,” he said. “We’re grateful, too, for how God has led and moved in our church.” 

As Dickens sees it, the successful campaign illustrates the power of people coming together as a community to help others. 

“I loved that it was a very large group effort,” he said. “The ask was just basic, but people stepped up and did what they could—and look at what happened. People give where their heart is engaged.” 

Hearts at Simple Needs GA were touched as well, said Yolanda Kingsberry, a member of SNGA’s board and frequent furniture volunteer. 

“We’re so fortunate to live in a community of generous supporters who value our work and want to help us help others,” she said. “We will make East Cobb Church proud by using this truck to bring comfort to many more deserving families.” 

In a reflection of the generosity of our community at this time, the largest prior donation to SNGA also came during the pandemic when Linked UP Church in Powder Springs donated $14,250 to SNGA this past summer. 

Founded in 2010, SNGA has distributed thousands of duffel bags of full-sized toiletries to shelter check-ins and people experiencing homelessness. Among other activities, the Marietta-based nonprofit last year brought birthday presents and other useful items to more than 270 homeless children; brought furniture and household items to 151 clients; and provided 166 children in 64 families with $100 in requested Christmas gifts. 

For more information about SNGA, email brenda@simpleneedsga.org.

 

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North Point East Cobb church plans: 4 stories, 1,300 seats

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North Point East Cobb church plans

A few more details about North Point Ministries’ plans for a church and townhome project at the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford intersection have been posted in the Cobb Zoning Office filings on the application, which is scheduled to be heard next Tuesday by the Cobb Planning Commission.

The 33 acres sits on land owned by prominent attorney Fred Hanna and his wife’s outreach ministry, and which they tried to assemble for a residential project in 2016 that was withdrawn.

North Point is proposing a 4-story building for what it’s calling East Cobb Church with close to 125,000 square feet, including a sanctuary seating capacity of nearly 1,300, according to the revised filing.

(You can read it here.)

East Cobb Church is the seventh congregation overall and the first in Cobb County for North Point Ministries, which is based in Alpharetta and was founded by Andy Stanley. He’s the son of Charles Stanley, the retired longtime pastor at First Baptist Church in Buckhead.

North Point’s campuses in Alpharetta and Buckhead have sanctuary seating capacities of around 3,000.

The new East Cobb congregation was formed in January and has been meeting at Eastside Baptist Church on Lower Roswell Road.

The East Cobb Church building (in the top left corner of the site plan above) would have a parking deck—details still not revealed—fronting Shallowford and a parking lot along Johnson Ferry.

The Cobb Zoning Office has done its analysis, and is recommending a denial, for traffic, density, land-use and other reasons.

For starters, staff analyst Jeannie Peyton concludes the the proposal doesn’t permit a use “that is suitable in the view of use and development of adjacent and nearby properties. The property is in an area with commercial and lower density residential uses.”

The application includes 125 townhomes located in the back of the property assemblage, bisected by Waterfront Drive, which has access from Johnson Ferry and connects to the Johnson Ferry Estates subdivision.

Nearby residential properties are zoned for R-20 single-family use, while the townhomes, proposed for the RM-8 zoning designation, would come in at a density of 11.55 units an acre.

The staff is recommending density of no more than 5 units an acre. The rezoning request calls for townhomes of at least 1,800 square feet, but doesn’t indicate a price range.

North Point has not filed a traffic study, which staff is recommending, and the proposal to close off Waterfront Drive also was noted by Peyton as a concern.

Capacity at nearby schools—Pope HS, Hightower Trail MS and Shallowford Falls ES—also would be negatively affected by the townhomes, according to the staff analysis.

Above all, Peyton wrote, the application doesn’t conform to the county’s comprehensive land-use plan.

“The property is delineated in LDR and NAC future land use categories,” the report concluded. “The requested zoning districts are not consistent with the LDR and NAC future land use designations. Staff has concerns about how this fits with the recently adopted JOSH study.”

That’s the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford Master Plan that was approved in September after a community process of more than two years.

Another major item in East Cobb that was to have been on the December zoning calendar is being delayed again.

The Sprayberry Crossing case, which first was scheduled for September, has been continued ever since then.

The Cobb Zoning Staff has continued the application once more, until February. Zoning cases are not heard in Cobb County in January.

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