July 19, 2009
The Cost of Mission II
Last week I began to write about continuing the good work of St. Brigid’s parish even in the face of a large deficit ($400,000) and our needing to cut the budget by $250,000. This week, I want to continue to consider how together we can continue to do the mission of the parish -- that is, doing the work of Jesus -- even as we face the debt and the loss of income from the convent.
There’s some good news to start with. Do you know what a “challenge grant” is? It’s when someone offers money to challenge others to give. Sometimes a challenge grant is made where a donor will match each dollar given with his/her own contribution. Well we’ve got a $100,000 “challenge grant.” A generous donation of $100,000 is ours for the receiving! What the rest of us need to do is raise the additional $300,000 by September 30th. That will completely pay off the debt!
WEB UPDATE: The challenge date has been extended to the end of October.
So, in these tough economic times do you think we could quickly raise $300,000 so as to take advantage of this challenge? I know it will involve sacrifice. I mentioned last week that our parish staff is making a salary-reduction sacrifice. In essence, we are sharing the struggle together. The question is, could your family make a sacrifice of a donation of $1,000? Certainly in some cases the answer is “not at this time.” We know a lot of families are struggling to get by, and that’s when the church family rallies to give spiritual support, advocacy and guidance, and sometimes helps with the necessities (such as food). But there are others who could decide: “It’s not everyday that our $1,000 could be used so effectively.” (And it’s not everyday that I’m asking for this kind of sacrifice.) “Yes, we could make a sacrifice of $1,000 at this time.”
Now maybe there’s someone else out there with an additional $100,000 or so to give, but I’m not counting on that. I am asking each family to consider carefully if there’s a way they could make a one-time really big donation to get us out of debt and back to our mission. (I’ve heard how this parish conquered over $1million in debt a decade or so ago -- we’re not facing that large debt now, but we don’t want to be in that situation anytime in the future.)
inally I want to say how much I and our staff appreciate all the words of encouragement we’ve receive since I began to write about this last week. It means a lot to all of us as we continue to pull together to keep the mission going.
