Immaculate Conception Church had a new look when it reopened on Feb. 27 after being closed for six weeks.

For several months, the Montgomery City church made some improvements such as painting the inside of the building and adding new flooring.

“It has been great to be able to do what we have done,” said Amanda Arens, who has been a member at ICC for 30 years. “We certainly wished we could have done what we had planned to do. The remodeling of the inside that we were able to do is considerably different. The parishioners seemed to be very excited about the way it looked.”

Arens said there’s still more work to be done to the church as new glass pieces are needed to be added to the building.
“It could be as long as six months before the outside is finished because it is taking so long for glass to come in right now,” Arens said. “We’re still in the process of finding a company who will actually work with us to do it. It could be several months before that project is actually finished. We also have Frank Schlanker working on additional stained glass pieces. We’re going to replace a stained glass window that hasn’t been there for years and years. It has been covered up by wood for a long time. It will be at the entrance of the church. We’re still waiting for that to happen.”

In 2019, the parish council, the finance commission and former pastor Fr. Austin Okoki held a town hall meeting and announced that there will be a capital campaign to help raise money for improvements to the church, and a committee would be formed. The committee – which included Arens, Courtney Cothren, Jacob Lotton, Pat Stumbaugh and Laura Yelton – was seeking to raise $850,000 to help fix parts such as the church tower, stained glass windows, the concrete walkway and the church ramp.

Arens said the capital campaign was discontinued. A total of around $200,000 was raised to reconstruct the church.

“The Diocese, which is the governing body of our church, asked us to stop because our church parish is having some significant financial issues,” Arens said. “It doesn’t make sense to try to earn money for the capital campaign when we need to worry more about getting money for our everyday expenses. As a result, we stopped the capital campaign. But we decided to go ahead and use what money we had collected to do as much improvement as we could with the funds that we had.”

The church was closed in January due to construction. Arens said since it reopened on Feb. 27, attendance has increased.

“It was very fun to be there on the first Sunday back,” Arens said. “Of course, I spent a lot of time there, so I knew what it looked like. Most people haven’t seen any of it yet. To watch their faces when they walk in and hear them talk about how beautiful everything looked, it’s really been a very uplifting experience.”