RededicatedFAQ

Why do we need a capital campaign when we have an endowment fund? The endowment fund, like the building itself, is a tool that makes many crucial aspects of ministry here possible year after year. Rededication to this ministry includes maintaining, updating, and improving all the ministry tools we regularly use, so that we hand down a sustainable ministry.
What is wrong with the way our facilities currently are? The cornerstone of our excellent facility was laid in 1979. It benefits from maintenance and updating the same as any home or business. As for improvements, while the architects showed great foresight for their time in designing it without steps, access remains an issue for the elderly and disabled due to the distance from the available parking spots to the door. Also, increased awareness of security issues in recent years speaks in favor of consolidating the entrances such that Door C and the school and gym entrances need not be used on Sunday mornings.
How do these changes promote the Gospel? Improving accessibility to services, providing more opportunities for personal interaction for our members, making the space as inviting and comfortable as possible to visitors, and increasing opportunities to use our acreage for the church and school to interact with each other and the community definitely helps us all receive, live, and proclaim the Gospel, which is at the center of all we do here and why St. Paul’s was founded.
How will this campaign help us increase participation, attendance, and school enrollment? These changes will improve access to and the overall experience of the services and events we offer. That is, they make participation here more possible for some, more likely for others, and therefore more fulfilling for all.
How will this campaign help us serve The Region in terms of human care? St. Paul’s supports regional ministries such as Rebuilding the Breach (transitional housing), Ascension Lutheran School in Gary, and Swaddling Clothes (help for needy families with young children). One of the main struggles these organizations face is the general decline of their supporting congregations. This campaign serves as “care for the caregiver” to ensure that St. Paul’s continues to be able to support a variety of human care ministries in our community.
Why do we have to have a capital campaign right now? We don’t have to, we’re choosing to. Good stewards know that maintenance is always best done before it is urgent that it be done. Updating can be done any time, as can improvements. We already voted last year to update the aging HVAC system and to do a capital campaign to raise the funds. This campaign incorporates that one aspect of stewardship into a larger, more general rededication of St. Paul’s. Forty years is a Biblical generation. Symbolically, the generation that laid the cornerstone has passed the torch to us. We can maintain, update, and improve things whenever we want, and now is at least as good a time as any. Why kick the can down the road? It isn’t likely to get any easier.
Why are we using the services of LCEF instead of running a campaign ourselves? Experience and plenty of data show that capital campaigns are far more effective when congregational volunteers have professional assistance. The elected leaders of the congregation chose LCEF because they were convinced LCEF would do an excellent job for us, but also because LCEF, the Lutheran Church Extension Fund, has the same mission as St. Paul’s and this campaign. Contracting with LCEF means contracting with ourselves as long as we consider St. Paul’s to be part of the wider church. Awareness of that wider context is one of the traits we seek for our members to have.
Who decided what needs to be done as part of this campaign? Ultimately the elected congregational leadership chose which specific projects would be included in this campaign. The whole congregation helped brainstorm ideas and came up with plenty of options, large and small, many of which could still come to fruition at some point in the future. We can’t do everything, at least not all at once, so the congregational leadership sifted through in consultation with the pastoral staff to pick the ones that in our view best reflect the idea of Rededicating St. Paul’s through maintenance, updating, and improvement of the existing ministry for the next generation.
What is the main purpose and intention of this campaign? The main purpose is ensure that St. Paul’s continues to proclaim the kingdom of Christ for many years to come, and to give all of our members a sense of renewed commitment to this family of faith, rededicating ourselves as well as our congregation to bringing the Gospel to people today and forty years from now.
What is the financial goal of this campaign? The target number is 1.5 million dollars, which is both feasible and challenging. Obviously there is some guesswork involved in setting such a goal, but there are general guidelines based on our size, budget, and history to help identify the important area of “not impossible” but also “not easy” to make this a genuine rededication. We could exceed that amount, which would be fantastic going forward, or we could fall short, in which case we would have to adjust the scope of our ministry downward going forward.
How will we replenish the endowment so that it doesn’t disappear? This is one of the key reasons we aren’t simply using the endowment money to do these projects. The endowment helps fund our yearly budget. If it disappears, we can’t keep doing what we’re doing, and what we’re doing is important. The endowment is there to support the ministry of St. Paul’s, which is what we want to hand down to the next generation. A portion of this campaign “repays” our endowment for work already voted and accomplished. More importantly, we have to ask ourselves where the endowment came from in the first place. It came from the wills and bequests of our St. Paul’s family members who have gone before us so that we can continue this ministry. We need to do what they did and put St. Paul’s endowment fund in our wills, which is a typical way of making sure what is important to us gets handed down to the next generation. That way we can continue to use the blessing of what we inherited without using it up such that we have nothing to bequeath to the future.
Do I really need to make a commitment? That is your call, of course. There is no requirement. The hope is that the goal of having St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and School here and active forty years from now will inspire people to want to be a part of that, and making a realistic but challenging commitment allows for the best stewardship because the congregation can plan with clearer expectations.
What if I can’t make my commitment? Only God knows the future. Sometimes people make a good faith pledge and then their situation changes. We all get that. This not a binding agreement like taking out a loan. This is you considering a great ministry opportunity and challenging yourself to reflect your best priorities realistically with your budget based on what you know now.
What if my situation changes for the better and want to increase my commitment? Praise God! You can always give more than you said you would, and the difference might offset someone else who made a good faith commitment but then suffered unexpected changes in employment or health and had to scale back on their commitment.
What does it mean to make a commitment? A commitment or pledge is not a legally binding contract. Rather, it is your way of participating in the planning and carrying out of the ministry of St. Paul’s as God enables you. Your commitment will not be public knowledge. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor; we all give according to our means. While a capital campaign naturally focuses on finances, church life includes our time and talents as well. When it comes to finances, nobody should be ashamed of their own pledge, large or small, as long as it genuinely challenges them and reflects Christian priorities.
Will new members be able to make a commitment if they join over the next three years? Certainly, though the main thing about the commitments is how they help the congregation plan. Once the projects are underway, new members will be encouraged to support the effort financially to help us make or exceed our existing pledge.
Why can’t we reduce expenses? We’d love to. We seek to run a lean but healthy operation here and will continue to eliminate any excessive fat from the budget at every opportunity. It is important to for all our members to have the confidence that the people presenting the annuals budgets and leading this campaign take the stewardship of St. Paul’s very seriously.
Will the atrium entrance and outdoor chapel/firepit significantly increase church attendance or new members?
The point of making long term, future-focused upgrades could lead to modest immediate gains in attendance and new members, as people who struggled to make it to church find it more accessible and people who never gave St. Paul’s a second thought notice new things going on in a fresh, welcoming environment. But we do not expect an immediate spike in the numbers merely due to having a new entryway and fellowship area. No building expansion, staff position, or new program on its own would likely accomplish that in any spiritually meaningful way.
The real impact will be that St. Paul’s remains up-to-date and accessible for decades to come. It is crucial that the building aspect of this rededication simply represent the physical plant side of the overall Rededication of St. Paul’s to the next generation. When viewed in the big picture, improved building accessibility and security (due to consolidated entrances) and an updated, welcoming environment in the fellowship are key ingredients to St. Paul’s having staying power for forty more years.
Will this campaign cover all likely capital needs over the next several years, like roofing work? Many of our routine maintenance needs are covered by monies from Endowment B and the regular budget. This Rededication and the capital funds raised are not designated for future maintenance needs. The Trustees do an excellent job of anticipating needed updates and have a plan using those sources for expected future roofing costs. While nobody can with certainty rule out the unforeseeable, the goal is that with the roofing needs accounted for, the HVAC being brand new, and some of the deteriorating brickwork removed as part of the entryway project, the building should be in good shape going forward, and we should have what we need in place to keep it maintained. Any and all major work done on the building covered by Endowments gets approval from the Voters’ Assembly first.
Why are we proposing new building projects when we currently have budget shortfalls? This does not seem to increase church attendance, giving, or help to solve our budget problems.
This Rededication is intended to address the big picture of St. Paul’s over the next forty years. Certainly a new construction project considered in isolation doesn’t solve any of our immediate concerns and arguably makes things worse. But it shouldn’t be considered in isolation. The building project is only one part of the overall Rededication of ourselves and the ministry of St. Paul’s.
The annual budget, weekly attendance, the building project, and addressing the sustainability of the endowments all correlate as interrelated aspects of this Rededication. St. Paul’s has had budget shortfalls nearly every year for decades; not doing a capital campaign in that time certainly hasn’t prevented that. The counter-intuitive but well-established fact is that building projects like this, funded outside the regular budget via capital campaigns, typically have a positive rather than a negative impact on the annual budget.
Does the campaign provide for any audio/visual improvements (in the sanctuary) to allow for a more modern worship service? The Voter’s Assembly has to make the final call on which projects, out of the dozens that the congregation proposed in preliminary open meetings, we end up pursuing; we can’t do all of them. The elected leadership has proposed the entryway (accessibility and security), fellowship area (warm and welcoming atmosphere), and outdoor facility (church-school connection and community visibility) as three such projects that would serve St. Paul’s well over the next forty years. As of now, those projects are only recommendations for the St. Paul’s voters assembly to consider.

The pastoral staff in consultation with the board of deacons crafts the worship service. Any proposed change from St. Paul’s traditional worship format to something more contemporary or modern would go through those channels. Capital expenditure for good audio-visual equipment for the sanctuary would be something the voters would likely have to approve using the Endowment Funds, and one of the goals of this campaign is to replenish those funds and keep them available for future needs.

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