March 13, 2025
Dear Siblings in Christ,
I am writing to you with deep gratitude for the faithful and abundant response this congregation had to our winter Feasibility Study. As you likely know, St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church is discerning a possible capital campaign for a range of projects to help sustain and improve our building as a resource for the ministry and mission we believe God is calling us into. Led by our Core Team of Bette Ashcroft, Rick Rinkoff, Sally Sand, Sarah Dull, and myself, this process prioritized listening and inclusivity at each step. We want to ensure that whatever we do next takes into account a diversity of voices in our parish, and honors our deep call to be about Jesus’ work of justice and discipleship as we aim to be a vital faith community. So far our process has honored this intent.
This January over 120 households participated in our feasibility survey and interview process, representing 54% of our active members! This is an excellent response rate. And, the positive indicators didn’t stop there. Over 40% of our respondents indicated a willingness to be an active volunteer in some way during a potential capital campaign. What’s more, with a broad showing of support for the projects named, it is clear that much of what we tested for in the feasibility study is highly achievable in a future capital campaign. All of this and a lot more good news is included in a Feasibility Study Report created by our consultants, Vandersall Collective.
An all-parish meeting where you can ask questions, provide direct feedback, and hear more about next steps will be held Sunday, March 23 at 11am in the Parish Hall (Gym) during Coffee Hour. We encourage you to read the report in full, linked here. (The original case statement is in Appendix C if you want a refresher on what proposals are being discussed.)
In addition, a recording of the vestry meeting with our consultants Mieke Vandersall and Tim Anderson can be watched here.
If you have questions about the findings, would like to read the appendices, or if you have any feedback for our vestry, and are not able to attend the meeting on March 23, I encourage you to be in touch with me directly at your convenience.
In the near future our vestry will be weighing the feedback and narrowing the scope of work that we hope to accomplish during a capital campaign, approve the goal amount, hire counsel (consultants) to accompany and guide us in the next phase, and begin to work on a revised case for the campaign.
There is a lot of work still to be done, but we are eager to get started. God calls us in this and every generation to steward all the gifts we’ve been given, both spiritual and physical, and to do our best to put all of it to work for the healing of a broken world. It has always been apparent that our beautiful buildings are one of the gifts with which we’ve been entrusted, and taking care of them is no small thing. And, it is our hunch that much more faithful and exciting ministry can happen, with our care and attention, in and through this building in the years and generations to come!
Faithfully,
Jered+
January 2025
We have exciting news! St. John’s is moving forward with a fundraising feasibility study, which is the next step towards a potential capital campaign. This feasibility phase is an opportunity to hear directly from you as we discern the willingness of our members to support a capital campaign.
You might remember that this summer we finished a listening process, facilitated by our Capital Campaign team, advisors from our Property Committee, Vestry, and our partners in this process from the Vandersall Collective. We worked to connect our values with potential projects. The result of this phase was a very clear report about our those values and priorities. And perhaps most importantly, everyone was provided the opportunity to be heard and as church leadership–we listened.
In the fall of this year, the Capital Campaign team enlisted the help of OPNArchitects to distill all of your helpful feedback and ideas into clear project areas. We are finally ready to share those with all of you!
Feasibility surveys and case statements outlining projects for consideration will be hitting mailboxes and inboxes soon. Please take the time to read, pray, and respond. Watch the recording of our January 5 forum to learn more.
Each member of this faith community has an important voice to be heard, and we want your candid feedback, thoughts, and a sense of your interest in supporting one or more of these projects to completion. As you read, pray, and respond, consider asking yourself not only your own thoughts on these projects, but how they might support the parish and local community. How might these projects enable us to live into who God is calling us into being?
In these projects you will see ideas that facilitate greater functionality of our spaces, enabling us to better serve both our neighbors and the city beyond our doors, and also better serve the vital ministries of our faith community. We hope you will see how these changes connect deeply to our values, ensconced in our Collect for St. John’s, prayed each Sunday as a mission statement of sorts. And, we hope you will find resonance with a vision for a building that is even more welcoming, useful, and supportive of our primary mission as followers of Jesus, to be about reconciliation with God and our neighbors, within ourselves, our faith community, and in the city and world in which we live.
We are so thankful that we have a generous, hopeful, and loving faith community, always eager to support the needs of this church as we seek to form servant leaders and disciples of Jesus who are passionate for his gospel of healing and restoration.
Being stewards of all our resources, including the building we know and love and out of which all our ministries are launched, is a vital part of our life together as a church, and we’re eager to share how we can partner in that work in the year ahead.
