Dear Congregation of Christ the Redeemer,

As many of you know, we have been working for quite some time now on our Building Campaign. We have a building committee, chaired by Dustin Albright, that has been working for almost 2 years now on the plan for our campus and worship space. We have just completed an important milestone in that process so I wanted to update you on where we are now.

Last year we hired LS3P as our architectural firm for the building project. After much work with our building committee, they drafted a vision for the campus that builds in phases. Phase 1 is to build the narthex of the church that will temporarily serve as our new worship space. Phase 2 of the project (future phase) will build the ultimate sanctuary and convert phase 1 into the narthex/fellowship hall. This is a very typical phased approach for building churches. In early 2022, LS3P gave us a ball park estimate of $2.5 million for Phase 1. We conducted an initial capital campaign in the fall to share details of Phase 1 and to begin securing pledges for the construction phase.

We recently hired Trehel as our General Contractor for the building project. Over the last 6 weeks, Trehel has put together the actual estimate of the construction costs for Phase 1. As you all know, construction costs have increased substantially over the last few years, beginning with COVID19 and the global supply chain issues impacting building materials and costs. Unfortunately, the total estimate came in last week at approximately $3.4 million. Many thanks to LS3P and our building committee for spending time ‘tightening the belt’ on the project budget last week and trimming the scope of Phase 1 to get us just below $3 million. That is still a significant amount of money!  

We have already been working with the Diocese and our bank to determine how much we can borrow for the project. Based on those discussions, we will be able to secure a mortgage on the new building of just over $1.5 million. (For those that don’t know, we paid off the mortgage on the current building at the end of 2022.) This means we will need to fund almost half ($1.5 million) of the total project cost. Again, this is a significant amount of money! Fortunately, we had a very strong initial capital campaign in the fall and have just over $800,000 pledged towards the project. This means we need to raise almost $700,000 more to have the total $1.5 million we need to go along with the $1.5 million mortgage. I know these numbers are BIG and we are still a SMALL church. However, we set an attendance record Easter Sunday and our congregation is growing. This isn’t about building a ‘newer’ or ‘better’ building: it’s about building space that can house our growing congregation and the expanding ministry opportunities that go along with that larger congregation. I know many of you have already made a pledge to the building fund: THANK YOU for that pledge. For those of you that have not, I am asking you to prayerfully consider your giving to Christ the Redeemer and make a financial commitment to the Building Fund, above your regular tithe. You can make your pledge on the CTR website or simply let Amanda, Luke or me know if you are willing to make a capital pledge. Our Mission at CTR is ‘Loving God and People for the Renewal of All Things’. We know God is going to bless that Mission and we hope you will help us do that!

Thank you,

David Sturkey

Senior Warden