The next step committee report: stewardship implications

Steve Lackey, Junior Warden

Over the past several years, the vestry of the Chapel of the Cross has given considerable attention to long-range planning for the parish and, most recently, the recommendations of the Next Step Committee. The hard work of many parish leaders has brought to light new opportunities for improving and growing our parish programs and facilities. As stewards of the ministries of the Chapel of the Cross, our parish has undertaken bold and exciting endeavors not only to allow for the future but also to improve what we have to offer today.

With our most recent annual giving campaign, the parish was able to add a full-time fourth clergy member, provide for our dedicated staff, and increase our level of outreach beyond our parish walls. We also have gone forward with replacing the chapel organ with a new instrument capable of contributing appropriately to our chapel services. In addition, we have embarked on a master planning process to explore capital improvements capable of enhancing our parish ministries through this century and beyond.

Our vestry has specifically considered whether or not we are able to undertake all this progress at once, and has determined that we should proceed in every avenue. A five-year projection by our finance committee demonstrates that we can maintain our annual budget with modest increases as compared to the significant ones of the past several years. We have received a pledge of $300,000.00 for the new chapel organ, and we have willing and able fund-raisers actively pursuing additional donations from music benefactors outside our parish. In May, the vestry approved investing a portion of our available resources in a master plan that will allow us to understand the realities of improving our facilities.

The resources funding our professional master plan come from undesignated gifts and memorials, and the expenditure does not spend down the investment portfolios that provide income for our annual budget. The return on our investments has consistently outpaced the projections utilized for budget purposes, and we look for this to continue to be the case. What's more, as we work through the master planning process, we will begin designing a capital campaign. This is not to say a major capital expense is a done deal; rather, as we explore the options we have for capital improvement, we also must explore the options we have for funding. The vestry believes that to proceed with these tasks simultaneously allows us to maximize the benefit of our efforts and expenditures and that drawing the work out in successive undertakings would increase the fiscal, physical, and emotional cost of each process.

Should we bury our talents in the ground when we have the ability to support any endeavor that we choose? Our parish has the opportunity to provide for the viability of our present ministries and to prepare the foundation for ministries that will live out our baptismal covenant far into the future. I encourage every parishioner to seize the opportunity for stewardship by looking joyfully to this year's annual giving campaign and by participating earnestly in the master planning process to map a sustainable future for our facilities. Together we can multiply our talents and build our future upon a foundation of rock.

In April the Program Review Committee, a sub-committee of the Next Step Committee, presented to the vestry an interim report containing a roster of parish programs envisioned during the next 20 years. Space limitations prohibit inclusion in the paper edition of Cross Roads; however the full report is available in the version of Cross Roads on the parish Website, www.thechapelofthecross.org.

The report is available as a Web Page or an Acrobat file (pdf).

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The deadline is the first Thursday of the preceeding month.

© 2005 The Chapel of the Cross