Greetings in Christ, all!
I want to share some very joyful news: on Tuesday of this last week, we hand delivered to Bishop Earl a check to eliminate our bridge loan debt. The church is now completely paid for and we are debt free…
When we began this project three years ago, it was assumed we would need two loans from the Diocese. The first would be a traditional loan from the diocese to cover whatever gap existed between the money we raised and the cost of building the church. The second would be a “bridge loan.” A bridge loan is money the Diocese lends us that we know we will be receiving from pledges. So, for example, while we raised enough money to build the church, that money came in and is still coming in, whereas contractors prefer you pay them when the job is done. 🙂
In the beginning, the Diocese approved loaning us up to $800,000 to cover the projected cost to finish the job, as well as a bridge loan.
We were able to finish building the church without borrowing money, except of course the bridge loan.
Tuesday, we paid off the bridge loan and we are debt free; praise God!
A couple notes…
If you pledged and are still paying your pledge, please continue to do so if you can. Through your generosity, cutting expenses and staying faithful to the budget, we’ve been able to save money and we took money from our savings to pay those bridge loans. It is our intent to put the remaining pledge monies right back into our savings.
I simply cannot thank you enough for your generosity and sacrifice to make all this happen. I can’t tell you how amazing it was to pay the loan off years and years early. All this happened because of you. Bless you.
So…what’s next?
I’ll get into this next week in my article. I’ll walk you through our plan for the next few years, as well as what our next step at the church is.
With all of my heart, I thank you and ask you to join me in praising God.
I’m so grateful to God for you all.
fjk
