Progress
During the pledge phase of Love.Loud. we've received just over $2 million in three-year pledges. In other words, we absolutely blew our Loud goal out of the water, and we were two-thirds of the way to our Louder goal!
Shortly after we received our Love.Loud. pledges, we re-financed our building loan at a lower interest rate. Our monthly note payment shifted to $33,592, which represented a savings of $4,723 per month.
To Build or Not To Build
First and foremost, we committed to not taking on additional long-term debt. However, our children and youth were still busting at the seams. In other words, our challenges did not disappear just because we didn't have the funds to build what we originally had in mind. We were challenged to think creatively about what we can do in our current space and what we might be able to build to alleviate this issue.
In the months following our initial pledges to the initiative, we worked with our architect to determine how much space we could build with the difference between our pledges and our mortgage management. If we paid just the required monthly payment to the bank, our mortgage management was a little over $1.2 million. After deducting the cost of the Love.Loud. initiative and our mortgage management, we would have approximately $800,000 (of the $2.1 million pledged) to cover the cost of a building and soft costs (interest, architect fees, and so on). We were just exploring possibilities at that point, and we committed to not making a decision to move forward without first bringing our recommendations to the Morning Star church family for consideration.
Two Years Later
Although we did settle on a smaller addition that we felt confident would still service our space needs for quite some time, the economy developed a highly uncooperative attitude. Despite our church family's best intentions, giving has fallen behind pledges. That eliminated our ability to obtain--let alone make payments toward--a construction loan. We've continued to develop creative solutions to our square-footage challenges, but our attendance will soon surpass even our creative capacity. As we enter the third and final year of the initiative, we're asking our church family to finish strong by fulfilling their pledge--or, for those who are new since the Love.Loud. began, by making a one-year commitment.