Called to Serve as Christ Campaign

Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever!

Last weekend we kicked off an Archdiocesan-wide capital campaign known as Called to Serve as Christ or CTSAC. This will be a three-year-long effort to raise a sustaining endowment which will fund the retirement and health care of priests and nuns. This is an extraordinary opportunity for all to play a role in strengthening the Catholic Church in Western Washington. Our parish goal is $1.328 million. As we collect money up to our assessed goal, 85% of each dollar will go to the Archdiocese, while 15% will be returned to us to help pay for the Church Completion Project. Monies received from the CTSAC rebate will be used to either reduce how much we borrow for the Church Completion Project, or to pay down the loan for it. Please consider how your giving over the next three years might best be shaped to benefit both Holy Redeemer and the Archdiocese.

Here are some frequently asked questions [FAQ’s].

1. Why are we doing a capital campaign now in the midst of a plague, quarantine, fires, and economic downturn?
   CTSAC began four years ago and has been running in phases throughout the Archdiocese; we are in the last phase. The bad things of 2020 were not foreseen four years ago and who’s to say next year will be better? The Archbishop has decided to complete the capital campaign this year.

2. What is the need?
   The Archdiocese has been operating a pay as you go plan for retired priests’ medical expenses and pension. That formula was predicated upon the same number of priests coming in as retiring. As we all know, for 50 years far more priests have been retiring than have been ordained. Medical costs have risen dramatically during that time as well. The system was close to a funding crisis prior to the launch of CTSAC. Since religious sisters were having the same problem, it was decided to add them as well.

3. How was Holy Redeemer’s goal of $1.328 million established?
   It is simply based on a parish’s annual income. Ours was $1.328 million when the campaign began.

4. How did the Archdiocese determine the amount of money being asked of me?
   The amount of money being asked of each of us was determined from a household’s annual giving to the parish, the annual amount given to the Annual Catholic Appeal, and self-reported gifts to the planning study. Remember, the request amounts are an invitation, not an expectation, ultimately seeking to challenge us to give at a meaningful level; a gift that brings joy, a gift that is a blessing to the donor as much as it is to the recipient.

5. What’s the status on the Church Completion Project (CCP) and what is the tie-in to CTSAC?
   The CCP is moving right along. We have been giving you weekly updates through our email blasts, as well as updates in our on-line bulletin. I hope you are reading them and find them informative and helpful. It is scheduled to be complete by Easter – but we’ll see. The 15% return on whatever you give to CTSAC will go a long way to reducing the amount of money we need to borrow, and to paying off what we have borrowed. Remember, once we hit the goal amount of $1.328 million, then we get to keep 85% of every dollar instead of 15%. As a reminder of the big picture on the Church Completion Project, I’ve attached here the lion’s share of a pastor’s column I wrote last year on it.

Church Completion Project.

In the spring of 2020 we broke ground behind the church to add 3162 square feet of space. The addition will include an adoration chapel that parishioners will be able to access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will also include another sacristy (room that is used for preparing for Mass as well as supplies); a large meeting room that can be divided in two with a divider [this space is important to us for additional meeting/classroom space, as well as an area that the choir can practice in]; additional storage space; two unisex bathrooms; and a floral room where all those beautiful flowers you see at Mass will come from. This will be finished in 2021. A blueprint of what I just described is on the wall in the narthex; check it out if you haven’t already. Here are a few more details.

1. How much does it cost?
   As of 09/16/2020, it is $4.4 million dollars.

2. Why does it cost so much?
   Wasn’t the original idea that we’d spend about $1 million on this? It costs so much because a project of this size and quality simply costs a lot.

3. Why is the project of this size and quality?
   There are a few reasons for this.

   A. Price inflation. The cost of building in Clark County has increased over 100% percent since the church was built just 12 years ago. If we had the money to do what we are doing now when the church was built, we could have saved $2 million dollars! Oh how I wish the Archdiocese would have allowed us to take out a bigger loan in 2008 to finish this work, it would have saved us a lot of money.

   B. The Archdiocese of Seattle, to which Holy Redeemer belongs, is currently conducting the Called to Serve as Christ Capital Campaign to fully fund the pension fund for priests and sisters, as well as fully fund their medical costs in retirement. This three year capital campaign means that we won’t be able to start saving money for a multi-purpose building until the mid-2020’s at the earliest. That means that it wouldn’t be until the 2030’s before we could hope to break ground on a multi-purpose building. With all this in mind and after further consultation with our administrator, evangelization team, finance commission, and building committee, I came to the conclusion that it was in our best interests to go big on the church completion project; to ensure additional meeting room space until the multipurpose building could be built in the 2030’s.

   C. Now to quality: as you’ve heard me say many times before, this parish is going to be around for a thousand years or until the second coming of Jesus Christ, whichever is first. When it comes to the quality of our church, we want it to last as long as it can, and to evangelize the importance of our faith in the process. To this end, we have to think beyond our own generation, and even beyond our own parishioners. So we want the addition that we are building onto the back of the church to match the rest of the church and not look like it was added on later; and be awe inspiring and beautiful, the best back of a church you’ve ever seen before, something that hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of people down through the centuries will pass by and be evangelized by. So for the reasons stated above we are going to complete the church in 2020 to the tune of almost $4.4 million dollars, instead of the $1 million project that we envisioned just a few years ago.

4. How are we going to pay for this?
   Three ways: 1) We had $1.9 million in savings, anticipate using another $1 million plus over the next six years from ordinary income, and ACA rebates; 2) we will receive 15% of whatever is raised for the 2020-23 Called to Serve as Christ Capital Campaign; that money will go the Church Completion Project. In the meantime, 3) the Archdiocese approved a loan to cover the difference between what we had on hand when ground was broken, and what we will have to pay when the project is complete. Pray. In vain does the builder labor if he doesn’t labor in the Lord. For those of us with intimate knowledge of this project, we can all attest to the presence and favor of the Lord upon it. Please continue to pray for its success.

Pray. In vain does the builder labor if he doesn’t labor in the Lord. For those of us with intimate knowledge of this project, we can all attest to the presence and favor of the Lord upon it. Please continue to pray for its success.

May God Bless You,

Fr. Thomas Nathe