“Crunching the Numbers”
Pastor Jenn has been doing a new sermon series the past two weeks entitled “IN THE MEANTIME”which has been a rallying cry for me. I have been so expectant to get the For SVL Building Project off the ground and wanted to see and show the congregation concrete progress on the building front, and we are making steady progress. But, never in my wildest dreams did I think we would be trying to accomplish this in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and financial crisis!
Since becoming the Project Leader late last year, I have been “crunching the numbers”i.e. numbers for building square footage, numbers for financing and interest rates, accrued interest numbers, payment amount numbers, construction budget numbers and numbers for the Surge & StretchChallenge. You name it, and I’ve crunched it!
As a retired U.S. Marine logistician, I am used to “crunching numbers.” It’s what I do and trained for, and I am going to continue “crunching the numbers”until the new AR building is sitting on the 10 acres of land in Summers Corner!
It’s not going to be easy, and it never really was, but with the coronavirus pandemic and the financial uncertainty, it’s going to be extremely challenging to say the least, take more determination and commitment, more generosity and sacrifice than we could have ever imagined before. Pastor Jenn calls it spiritual muscle, and I figure you only get spiritual muscle by spiritual weight lifting.
They say, we will transition eventually to a “new normal” and things will get better, clearer and less uncertain. IN THE MEANTIME, we continue to seek God’s will and wisdom and stay focused on the task at hand and modify and adjust the plan as needed.
Back to the numbers, though! I want to give you the big picture of where we are and what we are up against. The Surge has generated $61,463.93 in contributions to date (as of May 5th) which is remarkable considering the current economic climate. The Stretch Challenge may add additional funds because Regular Giving has been over the 50K mark for the past three months, but it remains to be seen if this will result in a surplus at year end.
The Surge 2020 Goal of 400K is broken down into 280K for paying-off land, 100K establishing a reserve fund and 20K for architectural design fees. This means we still need $338,536.07 in Surge contributions to accomplish all the above and keep to the project timeline.
Can it be done? Absolutely! I have recommended to Pastor Jenn that we extend the Surge & Stretch Challenge deadline past May 31st to allow everyone the opportunity to participate that may have been affected by the current pandemic and economic crisis. We will have more information on this as it becomes available.
IN THE MEANTIME, we continue to seek God’s will and wisdom and stay focused on the task at hand and modify and adjust the plan as needed.
Derrick Horres, Project Leader