Last week, I shared with you the joyful news that we are now debt free! For those who still are fulfilling their pledges to the Restore the Temple or Witness to Hope campaign, I am so grateful. Please don’t hesitate to keep that up!
This news naturally leads us to the question of “What Next?”.
To answer that, I would like to give you an overall view of my approach.
As I see it, we have four priorities: Worship God, Grow in Faith, Feed the Poor and be good stewards of our facilities. Every dollar we spend needs to be connected to those points.
I recognize that every dollar we have at this Church is money you worked for and earned and then gave to us, trusting we will be prudent and prayerful in how we spend it.
I try to respond to this by making sure I am accountable and careful with what you entrust to me. I make sure that I listen to the finance council, follow their advice and let our parish get to a place where we are not reacting to disaster or potential disaster, but being proactive on our buildings, grounds, etc.
So, we’ll start with the Church.
Now that the building is paid for, We are working hard at a plan to move the Organ Pipes back into our worship space. We followed the advice of an organ company in building the Church so we can “plug them in” with minimum hassle. Such a thing is expensive and we have been trying for two years to find a company that is able to fulfill a contract and project the cost so that we can give you a number that we will strive for. There’s just not a lot of companies doing this and, as is true of many of the projects we are striving for, many companies went out of business because of the pandemic.
Our building plan for the Church included a portico/canopy that will be over the main entrance and drop off to our Church so that people can exit their cars in bad weather. The Church building has the structure in place to receive this and at some point, we will let you know how much that is going to cost.
Our baptismal font, Reliquary and Devoted Divine Mercy Prayer area are all basically funded and planned. We are running into troubles getting people to take on these projects but are hopeful we will see these things soon.
We also are going to be getting new St. Joseph and Mary statues. These are funded, we’re just awaiting an arrival date (probably in the fall).
With that, let’s look at our buildings and grounds.
To put it bluntly, we do have a significant problem with our grounds. The area between the Church, gym and school is nothing short of a drainage disaster. Because of a massive influx of water every time it rains or snows, the ground is draining away, the bricks are getting soaked and falling off the walls and the sidewalks are collapsing. This is a serious issue and we have to get after it. Like the organ pipes, this will be expensive and a massive project.
We also are moving our Outreach Center; the place where we care for the poor and vulnerable. Right now, we host it in the white house right off of Saginaw to the North of the Church building. We have to move out of there and destroy that house.
We will move the Outreach headquarters to the house on the corner of Orchard and Davis street. We will tear down the garage there and build a bigger storage garage so that we can continue our vital work in caring for the poor and vulnerable.
The only obstacle we are running into is that the city is requiring us to continue to spend a good deal of money beautifying our property, which is eating into that budget. Pray we can work this out, as I haven’t had much luck and I am getting very frustrated with them.
These are the big things in our future and I’m so grateful that we are tackling these challenges together. I thank you.