Pastor’s Corner April 2012

The following was published in our monthly newsletter, the Redeemer Report.

Continuing to Embrace the Vision!

It has been over a year since we launched the three year “Embrace the Vision” capital stewardship campaign with the main focus being to pay down our debt in order to continue advancing the ministry vision God has given Redeemer.

Much good fruit has come from the campaign already-

• Redeemer Members pledged close to $600,000 to pay down debt over the next three years.

• The Campaign provided a template for recruiting ministry teams in order to facilitate wide participation by the Redeemer membership. We put this model in to practice by having our first ever ministry fair last May.  We are going to do another ministry fair this year, on May 20.

• Having personally visited each home fellowship group, I was able to gather excellent ministry feedback from Redeemer members to bring back to the Session for discussion and implementation.  The ministry fair was partly a response to this feedback. We will continue to work at mobilizing each member in the use of their gifts to serve Christ and His Church.

• The campaign provided a much better awareness about Redeemer’s ministry and financial picture.  The leaders of Redeemer are committed to transparency in both of these areas.

Several new families have joined Redeemer since our campaign launch last year.  For that reason, we want to invite more people to participate in the campaign.  Our goal is to pay down our remaining debt as much as possible as fast as possible.  If you weren’t able to participate with a pledge last year, we’ll be having another “Commitment Sunday” this year on April 15.  Please prayerfully consider contributing if you can.

One final note on the finances- an interesting dynamic seems to have occurred.  We are actually well ahead on giving to the Embrace the Vision campaign this year!  That’s good news for sure.  The “not so good news” is that our general giving is slightly down from our conservative projections.  Our fiscal year runs July to June, so the overall giving might still catch up, I just want you to be aware that we are heading for a slight shortfall at the current rate. We’re down in general giving about the same amount the Embrace the Vision campaign is up.  We run a very lean budget making more cuts every year over these last four years, so every contribution you can make is very helpful.

Building a church building like we have is a once in a church life time endeavor, so it does require a certain generation of that church’s life to “dig in” for a time.  We’re that generation.  We are down to just over $2.5 million owed on this beautiful property and facilities.  I am praying God provides the resources to pay it all off in the next three years.  Let’s pray together and give together.  I am convinced the ministry God has established at Redeemer is worth every penny and more.

In the Lamb,

Pastor Tony Felich