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Greetings Partners in Ministry,
For the month of September, the Stewardship Team
was
going to invite you all to what's called a "Principal Party." Yes, we know, it sounds like a party for educators (which we all agree should probably be a thing). But this is a little different. A few facts you may not know:
*Every month the church pays $17,000 on our loan from the Sanctuary renovation back in 2001.
*Of that $17,000, $15,000 of it goes to principal to pay off the debt and $2,000 goes toward interest.
*In roughly 3.5 years we'll have it paid off at this pace.
Hosting a few "Principal Parties" is one way to pay the debt faster. We've secured an anonymous donor to help pay for a portion of the interest of September's debt, and the Stewardship Team is taking the first step in picking up the rest of that $2,000 payment. Therefore, the entire $17,000 that we pay toward a month's loan will go toward the principal and get us even closer to being debt-free. In addition to that $17,000, we want to invite you to make a special donation toward the principal. A few of these over the next three years will cut half a year or more off our loan!
We were going to do this in September...but now we're not. We're going to wait.
We're going to wait because we've seen the pictures of Houston, and we're anticipating more carnage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, and we do not feel we can ask you to pay on our church loan when we're seeing people's loans and lives literally underwater.
Instead of giving a special gift to our loan this month, we want to invite you to take whatever you might have given ($20, $50, $100, $250, whatever it may have been) and give it directly to Lutheran Disaster Relief so that we can be the answers to prayers. You can give online through
this link
or you can give a check on Sunday to Lutheran Disaster Relief with "Hurricane Harvey" or "Hurricane Irma" in the memo line. 100% of your gift will go to direct aid.
We're grateful to partner with you here at
GSLC to change the lives inside and outside of our doors. Our Autumn Stewardship campaign will kick-off in October! Last year we received 180 pledge cards. This year we're going for 215 to go along with our Rally/Raleigh Day verse, Revelation 21:5 "Behold, I make all things new!"
In God's grace,
Pastor Tim Brown
Yvette DeSilva
Aaron Lindsay
Michael Sebastian
P.S. Wonder why we want to pay off the debt early? A special team from the Council has been working on some inspiring plans for further renovation:
*
a
new building off the south end of our campus that will have more flex space for church groups and guest organizations
*some updated classrooms for our growing Good Shepherd Lutheran Preschool so we can reach more children with education and the love of Christ
*a true entrance for our school and Sunday School so it can be as hospitable as our God
*a chaplet for smaller church gatherings to pray and praise in a more intimate space,
*a greatly expanded Narthex for our church entrance so that we can host some gathering in that space and welcome people in a way that is even more open and inviting, as we feel God calls us to be.
The plans are exciting; we can't wait for you to see them.
So, we're going to throw our Principal Party in February, around the time when we'll be able to unveil these plans, and we can't wait to invite you into this neat way to move our mission along.
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