Advance Planning for the Ministry Center is Complete with Approval by the District Board of Church Location and Building

As your SUMC Building Committee, we are eager to announce that an important milestone for our church family was reached on March 23, 2009 when the District Board of Church Location and Building (DBCLB) met with us to discuss the completion of our Preliminary Planning Phase for the proposed Ministry Center.  According to the Discipline, our District Superintendent, Dennis Godwin, and the other members of the DBCLB were there to discern if we met the three criteria to continue towards the next phase for our building program.  We passed on all three counts and received wonderful affirmation for how well we have undertaken the planning process and of course, the excellent work of our architect, Tripp Eure.  At the completion of the Advance Planning phase, we propose the church undertake to design and build a Ministry Center with 21,500 square feet of new space at a project budget of $4,950,000.  The three criteria that our church successfully passed at the meeting of the DBCLB are:

1.      Church Need

Why do we need to build a Ministry Center?  We demonstrated the immediate and urgent need for additional Sunday school classroom space as well as gathering areas for fellowship dinners (seating for 500 at round tables), an adequate church kitchen, church library and meeting space for the various ministries and small group Bible studies that our church does so well to create disciples.  In particular our youngest Sunday school membership ages 2-5^th grade is growing at an exciting pace thanks in part to the new adult Sunday school class currently meeting in the Fellowship Hall. 

2.      What are we planning to build? 

Tripp Eure presented a PowerPoint that summarized two years of study and planning work by the Building Committee.  Particularly intense has been our labor over the last three months as we worked toward a manageable project size and budget.  Our DS, Dennis Godwin and the members of the DBCLB recognized and congratulated Tripp for his exemplary work on creating a church campus that will serve us well for many years. Instead of designing just one more building Tripp has masterfully used his gifts to create a cohesive and beautiful campus.  Through courtyards that promise to add greatly to the charm and character of our church home as well as upper and lower level connectors that join the Education Building to the Sanctuary to the Ministry Center, we will worship, study, and create disciples of all ages and truly fellowship through the additions of the proposed Ministry Center.

3.      How do we propose to fund the Ministry Center? 

Jay Ahlquist, our church Treasurer assisted in this portion of the presentation.  He demonstrated the church’s ability to borrow $2.4 million even at our current giving rate, fundraise $2.1 million over a three year capital campaign with the remainder of the proposed $4.9 million project (approximately $400,000) to be raised by grants from Duke Endowment, additional giving to the Building Fund prior to the start of the capital campaign or through a separate capital campaign later to retire the debt.  The Cape Carteret Baptist Church for example has increased their giving by $17,000 per month to their Building Fund.  In evaluating our current giving patterns the good news is that from 2006 to 2008 the number of Giving Units or GU (not just pledged giving but members who habitually contribute to the weekly offering) increased by 60%, from 570 to 907 GU. On a less positive note, our average annual revenue per GU is $735.  It was not a proud moment for our church when Dennis Godwin professed his surprise and dismay at how low our current giving levels are.  As a mostly middle class church our DS let it be known that he knows we have the capacity to give at higher levels.  Below are the usual Church Giving Revenue Guidelines and at $735 average per year we are not even at the level of “Good”.  

Annual Church Giving Revenue Guidelines per Giving Unit

Good:                                    $1000 per GU

Above Average:                    $1500 per GU

Very Good                            $2000 per GU

What is our next step?  Dr. Tyson will receive formal written notification from District Superintendent Dennis Godwin that we have Preliminary Approval for our building plan for the Ministry Center.  During the next several weeks we ask for our church family to participate in studying the Advance Planning Summary Report.   Since we are still at the Preliminary phase, we do not have exciting blueprints to ponder or a beautiful model to show the church congregation.  Please take the time to study the planning documents posted on the church website or the bound copies we will have available in the church office.  It is our goal to host one or more educational gatherings to share this information with our church family as thoroughly as possible.  Groups such as the United Methodist Women and the United Methodist Men may want to invite us for informal Question and Answer sessions with their members.  Please know that we have been seeking input from every church organization for over two years now and were particularly intentional in seeking this input from your Council on Ministries. 

In the next few months we will seek your approval at a called Church Conference where with a simple majority vote we pray you will vote “Yes” to support the proposed Ministry Center.  At the Church Conference we will have blueprints and elevations to show what the Ministry Center will look like so we will all have a clear visual representation to aid in our discernment. We also have affirmed as a committee the cost savings that will come by bringing Ellis Walker Builders on now. Using the Team Build approach, they will work with Tripp Eure to do value engineering while in the design phase.  On their last several jobs they have saved an average of 4% of construction costs by being on the design team.  Currently, this is a good time to be embarking on building program as subcontractors are hungry for work and building material costs are at a ten year low since the building starts have so dramatically slowed.

The final step in the approval process will come once we have the detailed construction documents from Mr. Eure (12-18 months from now).  Being a connectional church, the United Methodist Church has a clearly spelled out procedure in the Book of Church Discipline which we will follow to the letter.  When the DBCLB grants approval of the detailed construction documents then our congregation will vote again, this time at a Charge Conference.  Then the excitement of watching the actual site work and construction will begin.  We will be well into our fundraising thanks to a successful capital campaign and will have this visible reminder of how we are growing to serve, again, in ministry to our community.

Thank you for your prayers, your patience and your willingness to study the Advance Planning Summary Report so that together we as a church family can discern our readiness to take this next great step.

John McLean and Julia Wax, Co-Chairs SUMC Building Committee