As most of you know, our congregation had a highly successful building and capital campaign over the past several years. Thanks to the generous contributions of time and talent, and the $17.5 million raised by hundreds of our members, we now enjoy a revitalized church home including our beautiful chapel, our spacious and light-filled fellowship hall, and completely refreshed family ministry spaces, as well as other important space and technology improvements. These building improvements support our church life together as we worship, teach, learn, and work for social justice in our community and the world.

When our final project scope and budget was approved by the congregation, we expected that in 2023 when all members’ capital gifts had been received, we would have a balance owing on the project of approximately $1.6 million, and that has turned out to be exactly our situation.

This project balance must now be paid, and if we use a commercial loan to make that happen, we will incur about $150,000 per year in interest and audit expenses, greatly burdening our church’s annual budget and ministry program. We have an opportunity to retire this outstanding project debt so that our church community and programs can thrive without this added financial burden, as we intend them to do. There is some great news: already, over a dozen members and families in our congregation have stepped forward with generous pledges toward retiring this debt, amounting to over $1 million! As with our original Not For Ourselves Alone campaign, we are hoping once again for broad participation from our congregation in this effort. We hope that everyone in the congregation will consider making a generous gift—of whatever size that is for you—to this Building for Our Future campaign.

Stay tuned in the coming days and weeks for additional information about this campaign, why it is so important, and how you can be a part of it. For example, there will be coffee hour conversations after worship services on both October 1 and October 8.

We are grateful to one and all for what we have achieved together so far, AND … we have an opportunity now to finish what we have started and continue the legacy of University Unitarian Church as others have done before us.