After almost two years of planning, Wareham’s Grace Lighthouse Church is nearly done building its first permanent place of worship.

"The Church under the tent" has been renting a building since 2011 and hosting its congregations under a tent at 2703 Cranberry Highway for many years.

"Everybody knows we're here on route 28," said Grace Lighthouse Church Pastor David Beguerie. "We're located right across from Perry's ice cream and we've got a captive audience during the summer time.”

Beguerie said he’s excited to have a permanent structure at the Cranberry Highway location because of the community connections the church has made over the years.

“People will look over and see the tent and we've got people who have visited Perry's who are now faithfuls to the church,” he said.

Grace Lighthouse Church was founded in 2007 to give older people a place to worship where they could reconnect with the "older hymns" and "[sing] some of the more traditional music of the church," explained Beguerie.

According to Beguerie, the Church purchased the property in October 2019 but the pandemic delayed building plans. Five months of the year, for the past three years, the church set up a tent to operate as an outside worship area.

"Over this last year and a half, we have gone over a very carefully, thought-through, prayerful process [to decide] what would be the right building solution for the church," said Beguerie.

He explained that due to high building costs and the want to avoid "putting the Church under a burdensome debt," the church purchased a modular building comprised of six, 60-foot sections that it will use to house its congregation.

Modular buildings are structures made from pre-fabricated pieces that are joined together on-site to form a complete building. Beguerie said that they have to follow a template for the building’s exterior, but can change the inside to suit the congregation’s needs.

Once assembled, the church plans on installing classrooms, offices and a roughly 2,000 square foot auditorium that will seat between 140 and 160 people, said Beguerie.

The project began in April 2023 when the church found the modular building for sale, said Beguerie. They are currently 18 months into the process and Beguerie noted it is possible this project could take "another two or three months" before they can use the buildings.

Beguerie plans to use the church’s tent in combination with the new buildings come spring 2025.