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Message from St. Michael's Project Advisory Committee:
Hello St. Michael families,
Over the past 6 years, building costs have continued to Increase. Recently, our Building Contractor gave us an updated estimated project cost of $10.5 million.
Because of your efforts and generosity, we have collected over $3.2 million towards our building project in the past 6 years. Thank you so much.
As most of you know, we had hoped to be breaking ground around September/October of this year. But first we had to get the Chief Financial Officer of the Diocese to approve our finances before Fr. Joseph could go before the bishop. The Diocese requires at least 50% of the total cost in our account before any approvals take place and before we can even think about breaking ground. We currently only have about 31% of the $10.5 million.
One thing is certain, we need a bigger sanctuary. We have been working with the architect, contractor and project management team to determine what could be added later if we decide to start with only the sanctuary first. Some of the items that we could phase in later to help reduce our total cost of project are: the Chapel, the bell tower, new covered walkways and renovation of our current sanctuary to a Fellowship Hall.
When we make these adjustments and focus only on the sanctuary right now, this puts us at a total project cost of $8.4 million, which means we need to have 50% or $4.2 mill cash in hand to meet the Diocese requirement. Brothers & sisters, that means we are $1 million away from our goal of building God’s house.
Today, only 14% of St. Michael families are participating in our Campaign for Cash fund drive to raise $1 million by next summer. This translates to only 270 out of the 1964 registered families participating! To make sure we all understand our current participation as a St. Michael family community, please take out the handout located in your pew so we can review it. All - our current participation to build our Sanctuary is included in this handout.
Fr. Joseph has worked extremely hard to move these efforts forward for you. In turn, he asked every family to commit to giving $1,000 to the building fund over one year, summer to summer. If you recall, this could be broken down to as little as $20/week. We ask you to please be involved in these efforts. The Campaign for Cash pamphlets can be found in the Narthex at the St. Michael staff table. Please take one home and return it to our parish office or place it in the offering basket. If you just want to give without making a pledge, please consider putting $20 in the purple building collection basket each week or whatever you can afford, maybe one hour’s pay every week. You can also give online through our new updated website stmichaelgptx.org. When you think about it, giving one hour of pay a week to our Lord is not much considering all the blessings he gives us. Now is the time for everyone to participate.
Another way we can raise funds is through community outreach. Let’s make a goal to each visit a local business or 2 and ask them to join us in a “United to Build” partnership with St. Michael. If we all commit to do this, we can secure funds from local business owners and bring new visitors to our church. We have sponsor packets available for you to present to the surrounding businesses. If you would like a sponsor packet you can download the packet found on our website or you can pick a few packets up in the office.
While we know it is now time to reach out to our local business community, doing this can be difficult when we look at our own participation numbers. Our participation has to improve if we’re going to ask outside donors for help. So let’s work together to make a new sanctuary a reality for ourselves and for our children. $1 million sounds like a lot, but we have a sanctuary in sight and as is states in Luke 1: 37 “for nothing will be impossible for God”.
DOWNLOAD SPONSOR PACKET BY CLICKING ON LINK BELOW:
/documents/2017/10/SPONSORPACKET.pdf
Thank you and God Bless.