Building Campaign Presentation on June 14, 2026

0:00 The Christ Covenant Church Building Campaign Report. I'm going to look this way so I can see them with you. Look, this is the most exciting thing. As far as my kids are concerned and my cat, this is already a successful campaign because I bought a laser pointer. Matt said, what do I need to be an engineer now? Pocket protector. Okay, so I already got the pens. All right, so next slide. psalm 145 for one generation commends your works it's easy for me to read this way they tell of your mighty acts one of the big themes here is connecting from one generation to another that's why we showed those slides hopefully you can get a chance to look at those later if you didn't see and there's some great photos of breaking ground and these buildings being built we want to really think, what have people done who have come before us? Now, this building is only 30 years old, so some of you actually were a part of the team that built this and gave money. But the majority of us in this church, myself included, we take no responsibility. We did not give a dime to this wonderful space that we enjoy every single Sunday and what's on our campus. But someone did in generations past. And what we're thinking about is not only what we, Lord willing, will use and enjoy, but what generations to come we'll use long after we're gone. Connecting to the past, some details. In 1974, the Calvary Presbytery of South Carolina planted a mission work in Southeast Charlotte. Alexander Presbyterian Church was on Alexander Road. Taking the name Christ's Covenant, the church became an organized congregation of the PCA in December 1981.

1:41 They had people moved away and had dwindled down to about four families, and they decided should we keep this going or not? And they said, let's give it one more try. And they called Harry and Cindy Reeder. By 1983, Christ's Covenant was a sturdy seedling, just 38 members, with a modular building, double wide affectionately. And we moved into this sanctuary in 1996. It was quite a wild growth curve from 83 to 96. 20 years later, the CLC open in 2016. Today's snapshot, current membership, over 2,500 members, average attendance 1,500. You say, where are all those people? That includes kids who might be at college, it includes missionaries, people that in any given week may not be here. Easter Sunday, kind of when everyone's here, 2,200. Our current budget, the fiscal year runs through June 30th, is 7.6 million. The next fiscal year starting on July 1st will be over 8 million. And you can see our growth over the past 10 years has been steady across the board. Never exponential growth in any one year, but just steady year after year, 4 or 5 percent, budget growing, attendance growing, membership growing.

2:59 As previous generations prepared for us, we want to prepare for those who will come after us. It is our generation's turn to contribute to needed facility updates. Here's a project timeline just to tell you where we've been. A few years ago already, the school and the church together met together with a joint committee to refresh the campus master plan. And 24 and 25, collecting a list of possible projects last summer, so really about a year ago, is when this kicked into higher gear. and what you're seeing now is the product of a lot of people working over the last 12 months. The steering committee was put together, worked with Generis. That's the consulting group that has a lot of PCA connections. It's led by a PCA ruling elder out of perimeter, and we've been contracting with them as they help us think through these details. In the fall, appointed a building committee, an architect was chosen, design phase.

3:54 Winter, a capital campaign committee. So notice we have two different committees. The building committee started first. They've been doing the lion's share of the work and getting all of the project plans together. We also have a great capital campaign committee, which is now together. So that's the how do we get the fundraising arm? How do we have the resources to do this? We receive general contractor pricing, bid analysis, refined project scope and cost. The ELT approved and then the session approved by unanimous vote at our May meeting just a couple of weeks ago. Here we are in June presenting a report to the congregation. We anticipate a capital campaign push. That sounds aggressive. We just mean public phase. And then the pledge would be a three-year period, so starting the end of 26 through 29. And the anticipated construction period would be in the first half of 2027.

4:52 and we're told it would be 12 months construction period doing the various projects together to save cost. And so it would be 12 months of a lot of stuff happening around here and Lord willing then the first half of 2028 could be finished. Here are the members of the building committee. Matt Lindner, Dave Glover, you can see all the names. These are wonderful folks. You can see the Capitol Campaign Committee with Bobby Silver and Rob Vierman as our co-chairs, an excellent group of men and women, different ages, different experiences. So, these folks have been working really, really hard and will continue to do so. And the Capital Campaign Committee is, as job number one, they have committed themselves by their own initiative and idea to prayer. And some of them were already gathering to pray this morning. They want to get prayer partners. They see that as the first and most important thing they can be doing is praying.

5:47 All right, we're going to get to the projects that this campaign includes, but you need to know two projects that are already underway that we have money set aside for that are not a part of the capital campaign, but are underway and you should know about and should be excited about. So one, you may say, didn't we buy this bank building just around the corner? You drive by it. Well, they started working on May 5. It just takes a long time to get permits and get everything lined up, but we are told that that work should be done this summer, and then the Matthews Historic Cemetery. So, we'll say just a little bit about each of them. Renovation complete this summer. Money is already set aside. We'll be used for staff offices and conference room. So, that will be a really nice place to put our growing staff and probably eventually some counseling ministries. And so, that's hard to see from where you are. You can look at it more carefully, but you can see some chairs there, a conference room. That's where the tellers would have been. You'll maybe be interested or glad to know it was not really worth the cost to remove the bank vault. So, the vault remains, and we're sort of, it's like a counseling motif that's probably where my kids have scoured it already. There are no gold bars or money left, but the vault remains.

7:06 And so that's the bank building. That should be done by the end of the summer. And then the cemetery. Design is underway. Funds are set aside. We've been working with the city of Matthews. So you're always working with local government and things take time. You don't always know how things are going to go. Right now we've had a really good relationship with the city of Matthews. We're optimistic, but we're not quite to the starting line of the project. We intend to add about 300 or more plots. So this would be significant addition to the cemetery that's on the other side of the road. More information on reserving plots will be available early 2027. So if you're thinking, how do I get one of those plots? Can I just give Tom my name right now? There will be a system and someone to manage that. So here, first instance to use, ooh, look at that. So here, am I right, Matt?

8:02 These are where the additional plots would be. So here are the tennis courts and a new facility building. And Aldi is over here. And you'll see on some of the other plans, there's a lot of work that we want to do to clean this up back here. There's just some parts that I just want to keep using the laser pointer just to clean things up. But you can see where the various additional plots will be. and we have plans and hopefully sort of next year that can be underway. All right, so what is included in this capital campaign? Four things, a new chapel, a new White House staff building, a meeting room slash space for His Abilities Ministry, and a new organ. You may have heard at one point refurbishing these pews. We still want to do that, but that's been taken out of the capital campaign.

8:57 That is several hundred thousand dollars, but we think that's something that can be done even in turns if we need to. Money can be set aside in the annual budget. So we still know that these pews need to be refurbished, but that is not in the capital campaign. These four items. So let's work through each of these items. So here's the overhead. Just to see these green areas are all the places that would be affected by the capital campaign where the work would be done. You can see this Florida Peninsula coming down here is for what, Matt? The lift station for... It's House Sewer. So you can ask Matt about all those questions. These are the oblong steps that will be replaced. But you can see this is all the White House and down to the cemetery and then these areas here, which you'll see in more detail in the slides ahead. All right, so here's the number.

9:53 It's a big number. but we're going to explain this number and I want you to read carefully the bottom part. So the total cost of all of these things that you're going to see is $17 million. Now what this includes, this estimate includes construction costs based on contractor pricing, soft costs, furnishing, site work, other owner costs, and built-in contingencies. You need to know that the building committee has been absolutely outstanding. And more than any nonprofit, any church that I've been a part of, anything, they have done this work. And what they've done is a lot of the work that I think in churches often happens after a meeting like this, they've already done. So, sometimes churches get up and say, we got a capital campaign, and we got a contractor to give us some prices, and it's going to be $10 million. And then later you find out, oh, to do that, we didn't plan in the site work, or we didn't plan in all the furnishings that go in there, and the carpet or the trim work, or we didn't think about as soon as you touch this building, you have to do some things to the fire code that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We have tried to anticipate all of those costs. Matt Linder has guaranteed in blood it will not be one penny more. No, he wants to be very clear that only God completely knows the future. But insofar as we have done all the work to know all the things that we think we need to know and even some of the things we know we can't know. We've tried to anticipate. So I'm confident that this is a very informed number with all of the things necessary to get us to project completion and moving into these spaces, 17 million dollars. So these four big things. There's a rendering of the chapel. It is going on that grassy area in between the main lobby doors and the north lobby. You say, is there

12:01 really enough space. There is up to about an inch to spare that leads up to the sidewalk. Now, during construction, there'd be a lot of stuff going on there, but eventually this wouldn't take into parking long term. It fits there in that green space between the north lobby and the main lobby. The need. Okay, here in each of these four items, there's going to be the need, the vision, and the design. And there's a lot of words, so if you read quickly, you can read it, or you can just listen as I try to give a summary, because these will be on the slides that you can look later this afternoon if you want to read for yourself. The chapel has been on the campus master plan for decades. We do have a current chapel in the CLC. It ended up about 120 people, so it is a nice classroom, and we have a Chinese community church that meets there, cross-covenant Chinese church, but we've not been able to use it for some of the needs we had initially hoped.

13:02 The vision is for a beautiful chapel that can be used for generations, for weddings and funerals, and really our anchor tenant is that bottom bullet point, our senior adults class. Currently, the senior adults, which is usually more than 100 people, we have a large and growing senior adults ministry, and they meet upstairs, which is not the most convenient place for the senior adults. So this is a first floor meeting area. So this would get used every single Sunday by our senior adults for their Sunday school class. And in addition, it can be used for weddings and funerals at a more appropriate size than this big room or the 120-seat chapel, which is too small for such occasions. The design, a 300-seat chapel, natural light, wooden pews, a timeless, beautiful architectural design. We did think about the pros and cons of making it a multi-use space where you're stacking chairs, but we think given the architectural and aesthetic feel we want and the fact that it's going to be used week by week for the same purpose as Sunday school class and the stress and wear and tear of facilities crew to take up and set down, you know what I mean, set up and take down multiple times. We really feel convinced that to have a permanent seating with pews is the best way to maximize this space. There'll be bathrooms, a kitchenette, a bride's room, and with that as a major classroom, that frees up some space upstairs.

14:41 Estimated budget for the chapel is $6.1 million, located off the worship center between the main lobby and the north lobby, 300 seats, 5,000 square feet, lobby, private room, bathrooms. Okay, we have a couple of drawings. So here you can see there's a center aisle, there's pews, it seats 300 people, there's a piano we already have set aside for it. You can see at the, that's why I got this thing, up here, so there are some doors that go to the outside, and that's fire code doors, and maybe on occasion they have to be used, but really the main entrance would be coming through north lobby main lobby and you'd be entering through here so this is uh this is along that hallway so there's always some trade-offs that it is now instead of having those windows there you would have going into a chapel but it still allows for natural light on these two sides and entering here into this little lobby in through our main lobby here's uh here's a picture that our architect this is a chapel that our architect built in charleston uh it will not look exactly like this can't promise what it will look like but we want you at least have some visual inspiration this is what the architect has done in another location and we said this this is the inspiration for what we would like this chapel to look like well i want want to underscore lest it looks somewhat different.

16:13 You say, you promised. I'm not promising, but this is the inspirational photo. You can see a classic design, pews, a center aisle. You know, it may not have all of that beam work there, but something classic, timeless, elegant, something that would beautify the space and the campus and be functional as well. Here's the White House staff building. Yeah, it looks almost like the White House. That is a handsome building. So you can see a two-story building. It would be significantly bigger and house more staff. And the need. The White House is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It was built in the 1920s as a residential home. Technology, infrastructure, workspace needs, accessibility, day-to-day operational demands have made its original design and use incompatible with what a 2026 ministry staff environment requires. It's a homey place, and we get a lot of work done there, but over 100 years old, and we're using it for a purpose other than what it was designed to pour more money into it would not be a good use. Just like if your car gets 300,000 miles, you can keep putting five and ten thousand more dollars into it, or eventually think, you know what, I think it's time for a new vehicle. Now, the White House, you may not have been in the White House. You may not know what it looks like. Here is our very own White House.

17:43 there it is a nice what is that a bungalow design coming in I won't say if it's like MTV Cribs that was a long time ago gravel parking lot a little shed back there deck all right there's the back of the White House you can see it backs up to There's a youth house. Whoa, now we're going in.

18:17 Can't tell you the code. lobby space a little microwave there's a hallway we got tom oh so clean what a good dutchman and uh aaron is in there and derrick goes through here where jenny blackman works and caleb's over and no he's not the copier there's Caleb. We got a deck out back that holds books. Brother Bruce's, nice space. Here's my office. The theme are books. More books. There's a lot of books, books, books, books, books. There's the porch where sometimes Amazon packages come. There's a John Calvin statue. It's not an icon. and then there's my desk where I do the sermons and then you go out here and my kids sometimes come there for candy. All right, so you can just see we have a great community in there and it's a residential 100-year-old house that we have made into office buildings and to put further money into it we don't think would be a good investment of resources. The grounds surrounding the White House. You've got a little picture, what shall we say, rustic perhaps.

19:41 Do not fit the rest of our campus, befitting a senior staff building. Building's 100 years old. It's reached the end of its useful service life. The vision, a new White House with an expanded footprint, two stories, more office space for more of the staff. Tim Burns, Nathan would be too, and then some admin, some space for probably another receptionist, because Jenny really is doing receptionists and serving multiple pastors in there and still with some room to grow. Significant site work. When you see the cost in a moment, you need to keep in mind a significant part of the cost of the White House or site work there to connect to the Youth House, the Cemetery, Pleasant Hill Drive, paved parking, professional-looking green space. A colonial revival-style building that captures the look of a historic White House. The idea is you might drive through Charlotte. In fact, the inspiration for that was from driving through Charlotte and taking some pictures of some colonial revival style homes. So, it'll still have a residential feel, though it's offices inside, that someone might say, huh, wow, that looks brand new, but it almost looks like that could have been one of the historic homes here in Charlotte.

20:54 We want the building to look fresh yet historic, to be an appealing structure where people drive by, people walk by. It's something that adds beauty to our campus and even to our community. Estimated total cost, $7.7 million. So a fifth of that is the site work. Location, same spot as the White House, slightly moved back, and a bigger footprint. Two stories, 14 offices, lobby and meeting room, new green space, parking, and site work. There's a couple other drawings just to an angle and to the side, similar to what the rendering was. So, you can see two stories. So, the bottom there, this would be Covenant Church Lane. We'd still mainly, people would come in and this would be the main entrance to the back and a lobby area, offices, offices, break room, other offices, stairs going up to the top, an elevator, then a second floor with offices, offices, offices, pastor's offices. I've asked for a bookshelf that doubles as a secret passage right here, so maybe come in. So you can see similar on the first and the second floor.

22:04 Here is this red box here is the current spot for the White House, so you can see moved back just a little bit, and it's wider, and it's doubled because it's two stories, and all of this site work here. So you can see right now, if you've ever had to come into the White House, you drive in here. It's a one-way driveway. Sometimes you have cars coming and going at the same time. It's a bit of a hazard. You'd be coming in through the Pleasant Hill Drive and coming back here is the way you would get into the White House. Much better way for traffic and for flow. Many people, myself included, are interested in these trees. We are committed to keeping all of the healthy trees that we can. Matthew likes when we keep all the healthy trees. We love trees, and so if at all possible, we'll keep every tree that's healthy and try to build around them. So the meeting room. So the chapel was there. The meeting room would be between the south lobby and the north lobby in that green space, which is a meeting room. And think of the anchor tenant in the chapel would be the seniors community. The anchor tenant here would be our His Abilities community. We have multiple ministries, including His Abilities Women's and Children's Ministry, with needs for additional space to meet on campus. And we have the opportunity to provide more thoughtfully adapted physical space to support special sensory and learning needs with our growing church body. Our King's community meets in one of the rooms behind me here.

23:40 Leaving that space also helps with our children's ministry to provide another needed room for nursery on Sunday morning. And then this would allow some special design features that would really help our His Abilities ministry. The rooms will provide expanded space in a more appropriate setting for growing His Abilities ministry, focusing on Sunday morning use, also free of children's ministry space. that provide space for Bible studies, fellowship gathering, seminars throughout the week. A flexible open meeting space that can be used as one larger room. You'll see a picture in a moment with a folding partition down the middle. We envision an attractive hospitable interior with an internal restroom, which is important. Ample storage to accommodate multi-use flexibility. Specialized design features to provide added support for additional sensory needs. estimated total cost of this part of the project is two million attached to the worship center so you'd still you'd enter through here in the main worship center between the lobby and the south lobby just about 3,000 square feet partitionable flexible space accessible exterior ramp and here's one drawing you can see it's a simple design as it fits in that space with a partition here they can go in the middle and some restrooms and some storage space and added little nooks and crannies off the side for this meeting slash his ability space, we're calling it.

25:08 And finally, the organ replacement. Now, you may notice these are some pipes. So we are envisioning a hybrid organ with, I'm not using the right terms, Nathan, but we'll just say a register or a few, a row, a few pipes. This is not a full pipe organ. The cost, we'll come to this at the end, but the cost for this organ replacement is $800,000. A full pipe organ would be $3 to $4 million for this room. So that didn't seem feasible, but a hybrid. So we have a digital organ currently, and this would be a hybrid that uses digital sound. Say more about that in a moment. But part of it would also include some pipes. And this is just a rendering of how the pipes might go. We're committed to do something tasteful, just flanking there. We don't want to make the pipes themselves the center of everything. But something like that is what it might look like. So, let's say more about the organ. The organ is 30 years old, has reached the end of its useful, no longer youthful, service life. It has exceeded its expected functional lifespan. The quality, though it may not be known to many people, some of you say that sounds just fine. If you have the ears to hear this sort of thing, it has been declining and will eventually give out. Organ maintenance professionals and our worship staff recommend investment in a new organ. Again, you can think about, well, you know, when is it time to replace a car versus just paying to keep up the car? We think to repair the organ would be unwise and cost prohibitive. Christ's covenant has long appreciated the richness and variety of a blended worship service that reflects both the transcendence and imminence of God. I don't want you to think that to invest in a new organ means we are no longer having guitar, no longer having newer songs, and we're only doing organ, only doing the Trinity hymnal. We'd be continuing the same

27:13 kind of musical vision that we've had for many years. We hope to retain and enhance this blessing for both current and future generations. A quality organ gives a sense of majesty and provides an excellent support to the human voice. It's an investment in beautiful, powerful congregational singing for generations. Musicians think about this, and we're glad that they do. One of the things a good organ does and played well, like Pam and others do, is with the pedals and the resonance and the registers. It supports the sound of the human voice. And we think to invest in a new organ, when you hear it, you know, when it would come in, you would say, ah, I didn't even know all that I was missing. The design is a hybrid, meaning it will rely on digital sound and custom-built pipes. Nathan, as you might imagine, has done the deep dive on this. The quality of this new organ will be a marked improvement over our current model, yet far less expensive than a traditional pipe organ. The builders have designed an instrument for us which has the primary goal of supporting congregational singing, but with the secondary goal of having the flexibility, color, and power needed to support programs such as Handel's Messiah. Estimated budget for the organ replacement, $800,000. The specs, if you want the details, a three-manual hybrid organ designed and built by Cornell Zimmer Organ Builders here in the area. They custom build the pipes. They use something called Walker Digital Sampling. You can Google that later. It's very impressive. It's used in world-class venues everywhere. A proven system for facilities of our size and acoustical characteristics. All right, summary of the costs then. You can see the 6.1, 7.7 for the new White House. Remember, a significant part of that was the site work, the meeting space, the organ. Add that up at 16.6, and we have said the total estimated project costs, we rounded up to $17 million. Now, how will we pay for this? This is important.

29:22 We are prayerfully looking and hoping and asking for contributions. Now, the capital campaign will start in earnest later in the summer for $12 million. We have $5 million that the session has committed to put up front. We have $5 million in reserves. So, the total project cost is $17 million. And if the contributions from the congregation exceed $12 million, well, that allows us to replenish those reserves or do the pews sooner than we might have expected. you need to know, even with an investment of $5 million, if you're thinking, well, that's wonderful, that's nice. Does that mean we have nothing left in the bank? No. Our reserves, think of it as operational reserves and capital campaign reserves. This is taking from capital reserves that have come through surplus, through bequests. Sometimes people give to a capital campaign building fund over the years, we would still have a very strong set of reserves in our operational fund. We've compared with a lot of other churches, and we'd still be even beyond and in a healthier place than other churches we know of our size in the PCA. So, God has really, really blessed us through good financial stewardship, through conservative budgeting, through your generosity to have the ability to still keep very healthy operational reserves and commit $5 million right away to help get this project underway. Debt, you may ask about. Church leadership is open to taking on debt. We have done that in the past for the CLC and for this building would not have been built, certainly not when it was without debt. Many of us have had personal debt, but the goal, The goal, and we think $12 million is a reasonable goal for a congregation our size, so the goal is that we wouldn't have to take on any long-term debt. Almost surely there'll have to be a bridge

31:33 loan for construction, which is a debt against the pledges as they're received, but hopefully wouldn't have to take on long-term debt. If we do have to take on long-term debt and resulting in a lien on any of our church property, that would come before the congregation for a vote. We've done that before. We're not opposed to doing that, but we're really hoping that we won't have to. Our consultant tells us and all of the ministry websites say that a good goal for a capital campaign is to raise 50% more than your yearly budget in a three-year pledge period. So if you remember, our new budget's going to be over $8 million. If you take $8 million, 50% more is $12 million. Some churches don't hit that, and some churches do two or three times their annual budget. But one and a half, your annual budget, is usually the standard goal.

32:31 So we're right at that standard goal that experts tell us. By God's grace and sacrificial giving can be reasonable for a church to undertake. shake. This was approved by the session, these two motions unanimously to initiate the capital campaign as summarized in this report with a total estimated cost of $17 million and motion two to approve the use of up to $5 million from the church's reserves to be applied toward the cost of the campaign. Some questions you might be asking, these are written out in more detail. You can see them later if you want to get the written answers to these, but just some of the questions you may be thinking, is now a good time to do this? Believe it or not, we first planned for a capital campaign like this in 2019, and we're planning on rolling it out in 2020, and then stuff happened in the world, COVID, and so we ended up doing the covered drop-off and the bathroom tower, and then we picked this up again three or four years ago. So this has been underway for a long time. Construction costs, especially in this area, are likely to increase and probably significantly. So, to do this now, we believe, is good stewardship. Is this feasible?

33:48 Explain some of the financial mechanics of what typically experts say one can expect in a three-year campaign and how we're using our reserves to help with this, hit this benchmark. Will we be depleting our operating reserves if we use five million for this campaign? Also talked about that already. We have budgeted conservatively for many years, and as we've compared with other large PCA churches, most of these churches try to keep three to six months of an operating budget in reserves, three to six months of their annual budget if some crisis catastrophe hits. And so, we are even just above that range, and God has been really good to give us a very healthy financial position. How confident are we that the total cost will not be more than $17 million? Again, while we cannot plan for every possible contingency, we are confident this is a very informed number based upon the best information that we have available to us right now. Number five, there's only a few more, do we currently have any debt? Well, we have to take out debt. I already talked about this.

35:03 We do not have any debt as a church. I do not believe that it's wrong to take out debt. Most of us, I said, have had personal debt at some point, but again, our hope is that we won't have to take out long-term debt. Should we be spending this much money on ourselves, just to put it bluntly? That's what some might be thinking. This looks really great and that would be really wonderful, but are we spending this much money on ourselves? I would encourage us to frame the question differently. First of all, to think of it as genuinely the ministry that we're undertaking here for a growing church. We could have said in the CLC, this was before I was here, should we be spending all this money on ourselves? I think now most of us wonder how did the church, how did this church operate without that building, without those spaces for Sunday school and youth?

36:00 And I think we will find the same with these things, Lord willing, if we can build them in the year and a half ahead or two years ahead. At some point in the past, people built these buildings and gave for this amazing campus that we now enjoy, and we believe now is the time for us to make that investment, not only for ourselves, that's not the right way to put it, but for generations to come. And you need to know our missions budget continues to grow. We continue to support new church plants. We certainly don't want to take away from our annual budget. We don't want to take away at all from our missionary giving, and we believe that it doesn't have to be an either or. Just two last questions. When will we hear more about the capital campaign? So, you can submit questions. Some of you are probably doing so right now, and there will be an email up in just a moment that you can support or send in your questions.

36:58 We'll try to have somebody answer those. And the public-facing nature of the campaign, we expect to be starting late summer, going through the fall with a celebration Sunday sometime in November is the plan right now, a Sunday to bring in and count the pledges and celebrate what the Lord is doing. And finally, when might construction start? I mentioned that earlier. We've been told construction will take about a year. We can expect some inconvenience during that time, but it saves money to do the project instead of these big projects and stages, and you have to pay for a lot of overhead in those two stages to do everything at the same time, and hopefully starting in the first half of 2027 and then finishing a year later. Info at ChristCovenant.org is the best email right now if you want to send in questions at any time in the days and weeks ahead. Info at ChristCovenant.org and texting for these questions.

38:00 And then just two verses as we close and then have some time for questions. 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. We see this as an opportunity to pray, an opportunity to rejoice, an opportunity to give thanks for all that God has already done for us. And then Psalm 127, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. Whatever happens with the building, if we raised more than 12 million and built these buildings and it made us proud or self-assured or arrogant, that would be worse than a waste. And even if we weren't able to do all of this, and Lord willing, we can, but if we weren't, and yet it brought us together in prayer and dependence upon God, then God would be doing something good in our midst. We want to be dependent upon God even as we try to be as thoughtful and as organized as we can. There, I told you it was a lot of information, and we have some time. It'd be a little unwieldy to just have hands up. That's why you've been texting them in. So, Tom, are there some good questions for me and Matt? Sure, there's some good questions here. Let's start with a couple of questions that are actually non-project. We'll go about 15 minutes just for those who are away. We might not get through every question, but okay, keep going. A couple of questions that are non-capital campaign related. So, a question regarding the bank building is this just an interior retrofit or will there be demolition of the drive-thru and other things to expand the building yeah matt probably has got the best read on that yeah so it is primarily an interior renovation there are some exterior modifications has taken place. We have paved the drive-through, so it's a patio area. We'll be doing some

40:08 trim work, stuff like that. We're doing some painting outside, replacing windows, so, and landscaping, but you will mostly, the changes are from the inside. But it's pretty major inside. This is not just some new paint. Yes, it was gutted all the way to the walls, except for the vault, as mentioned, and it's being rebuilt. So they're in the framing stages right now. And one of the things with that I forgot to mention, with the White House, the thought is the White House staff could use the bank building as a temporary location while the new White House is being built. Didn't have all those pieces together when we started, but that would work out very nice. other staff would be there long term, but that's a really good possibility for the White House staff. All right, a second question related to the cemetery.

41:02 Will access to the cemetery be maintained during the construction project? Well, that's a good question. Yes, there will be times where we will need to coordinate services. Right now, if, Caleb, maybe you could go back to the cemetery. Wow, way to go, Caleb. Right first try.

41:26 So there's three sections. Kevin mentioned this one here. See, I have one, too. I have a pointer. And... Well, we'll go over here, then. Oh, yeah, we'll go over here. So there's a secondary portion right here. So you'll see there'll probably be some interruption as we do the work here. There's beautification. So obviously the cemetery is really just prepping for the future grave sites. So there'll be... But mostly it is this area back here. There's a grove of trees. and this is an earlier rendition of this plan. We have since gotten a tree survey and we are trying to incorporate some of the healthy, large canopy trees back there so it'll have some shade for services, that sort of thing. So we're reconfiguring this a little bit.

42:22 So we can see, and you have a turnaround back here for hearses and for other traffic. So there will be some interruption at times. but the whole idea is it'll be staged. All right. And then thinking about pew cushions, it seems like we have a variety of opinions about pew cushions from the questions. But what year could we expect to have pew cushions replaced since they are using general budget funds since they're not part of this capital campaign? Yeah. You looked up the cost, and it was, I mean, it's $300,000 or $400,000 to do the... How much flooring? It depends on how much flooring you might do underneath.

43:11 I would hope that we can get it into the budget as soon as we're doing the next budget. Nathan's looked into it. How soon can someone start if we want to get started? We could start as soon as this summer. However, as Kevin just mentioned, we're going through the process of looking at maintenance budget overall. and so we'll be working that into ongoing funds that Rick uses to maintain the whole property, and that will be worked. I believe that the cushions will be worked into that. We could start as soon as the funds are available.

43:44 All right, a question about the White House. Why is there a need for the new White House if the bank building is going to be used for offices? Well, the bank built, so the question is about the new White House if there's a bank building. The bank building was built because we need more space for the staff as it is now, not for their people in counseling and women's ministry. I forget all of the tenants that were going over there, but we already need that space for the staff as it is now. So they're crammed into other places and making do with, you know, no one's complaining. so this seemed a good solution for a temporary place but we purchased that knowing that we needed space for staff not just a place for the White House. So and the how many rooms how many offices are in the the bank building? Five? Six. Six. So that that that will you know maybe work to squeeze all of us in for a short period of time, but the new White House has 14, so it's a significant upgrade and allows, like I said, at least Nathan and Tim and more of the senior staff to be under one roof. So, most people may not be as familiar with the campus that we have, you know, staff in 11 different places, I think, and so they're in the A building, There's a whatever direction I'm in.

45:21 There's a missions house, mission and outreach, and then there's a CO house. There's a youth house. And there's some advantages to being in some different places. It gives a little bit, it can give a kind of a community feel. I think it allows like a CO house or the youth house to not have to have the same vibe or the same dress code maybe as the senior pastor where he's at. So it allows for some flexibility. that we like, and yet it also is not ideal to have our senior staff scattered as many places. Now, this would have to be, you know, three stories to get everyone under one roof, and people are in some good places already. But this would at least allow us to have more of the senior staff in one place and with some room to grow. One person, and I think probably many people, really love the historic nature of the White House. And so, the question really is simply, does it have to be demolished? Isn't there something else that could be done?

46:29 We've thought about that. Our resident engineer may be able to say some more about that building. We got that very question from the town of Matthews. We visited them in December, January I guess and they asked the same thing obviously it is a nice house it has been cleared of any hazardous materials except the siding is asbestos it contains asbestos so any any time you disturb that you're gonna have to treat it and it makes it pretty cost prohibitive to try to pick it up and move it or to add to it. To Kevin's point during the presentation, you know, this is a house that was built a hundred years ago, and if you put it in different terms, that means our pastors, our staff are working out of bedrooms and living rooms from an old small house. And the new White House, you got to consider we're calling it a White House as an ode to the previous, but it is an office building, not just a bigger house. So this is a modern office building with being able to support modern office needs.

47:44 Will CDS have access to use of some of our new construction projects as they do currently? We haven't had a deliberate discussion with CDS about these things other than there's lots of overlap, and, you know, the CDS board is made up of 10 people from Christ's Covenant, myself included, and Derek, and Blair, and ruling elders. So, there's good knowledge transfer, but we haven't sat down and talked about this. I'm sure the short answer is just like we share spaces all over this campus that, you know, when appropriate and when available, there'll be some, you know, we'll be happy to share that space. But we want to make sure also, you know, there's a very good relationship between the church and the school, but you can imagine there's always sort of just, you know, friendly sign-ups for things. So, on the one hand, I want you to hear clearly that we're building these for the use of the church, and we want the church to have the priority to use them. And at the same time, we love the school. It's the largest ministry of this church, and those two spaces, the meeting room and the chapel, would be great spaces that, when appropriate, I would imagine the school would find some use for them.

49:13 All right. Let's think about the organ for a minute. A couple questions. The first is, why would we spend so much money on an organ? There may be people who don't favor an organ, but why spend so much on one instrument? Yeah, the question really is going to be shaped by how much you do or don't like the organ. I think that most of us appreciate the organ. I get that probably some people would say, you know what, if it were just up to me, we would have less of that. And others in here, you could pick another instrument that you might say, I wish we'd have less of that. But God has, I think, brought us together, John Haynes before, and then with Nathan's leadership over these years, to I think have a good, warm spirit of unity in what our musical style is like.

50:15 And just to reiterate the slides, I think, and Nathan does, and so does our senior leadership, that the organ is a really important part of that, that there's a sound that can't be replaced by any other instrument. And things are, I mean, expensive. We have to replace sound boards, and those can be over $100,000, you know, various instruments here. So, things just for a room this size are going to cost a lot of money. And to have worship here and not have any organ in use would feel to me like a mistake for the kind of music that we want to do, the sort of singing that we want to support. Yes, there are…you could get an organ that would be less than that without any of those pipes, or you could get an organ that would have all of the pipes. I mean, you could probably spend anywhere from $400,000 to $4 million on a new organ. And so the one that we've identified, I wouldn't even say in the middle because it's much closer to the least expensive, is $800,000, which we think is still not cost prohibitive, but gives us some of the flexibility and some of the sound that we haven't had before.

51:40 Regarding chapel, a question is, would use of the chapel for funerals and weddings be, would there be a cost to members to use a chapel or might it be free for members to use a chapel for funerals and weddings? Do we charge anything now? I just work here. As of right now, we do have some fees related to weddings. That is to cover things like sound and coordinators and those sorts of things. There are fees related to weddings. There are not fees related to funerals. And we do not demand fees for pastors leading funerals and those sorts of things. So that's the way it's set up currently. So there's a minor fee for, I shouldn't even say minor, I don't even know what it is, but there's a fee to help cover. Correct.

52:30 And we're not, I haven't thought about it until now, but I don't think we're envisioning any new fee structure. That is correct. Yeah. All right, let's, then a few questions regarding giving. How does this project or these projects fit into the overall budget? You think about, do we know how much is spent on staff and missions, for example? Thinking about how it fits in the big picture. So our budget, as I said, will be over $8 million for the 26-27 fiscal year that we're just to come into. And by, you know, I'm entering my 10th year here, and the budget has pretty consistently gone up 3 to 4, sometimes 6, 7 percent. percent. It's been in that sort of window and keeping and tracking with our growth and attendance. And we've been able to have surpluses at the end of most years. So we've been in a really healthy financial position. I don't know the percentage off the top of my head, but I think it's in the upper 60s percentage that goes to staff salaries and benefits, which is not unheard of in a church our size. That's where the bulk of it goes. We give over a million dollars to missions. Most of that comes through Faith Promise and then some through our budget.

54:00 We currently don't have any debt service that we have to pay for. So, we don't anticipate that the budget is shrinking because of this. Obviously, if we did have to take on long-term debt, that's debt servicing that you have to work into an annual budget, but we've been able to track on a good growth curve. We've been in an enviable position as a church that each year, missions committee looks at, let's add some new missionaries. We've been able to, when we need, add new staff and new ministries. So, we trust that God, and without presuming upon Him, we'll continue with that, and we feel like we've budgeted thoughtfully and conservatively, and that yes, there's no doubt that the money is for any campaign in a church is coming from the same people who are also giving to the annual budget. So, I mean, one way to think about it is if you take that 50% number, you think just as a starting place. Some people would be sacrificial, and they wouldn't be able to give this much, and some people could give more than this. But you think, could I over three years give the amount of last year's tithe plus 50%? Could I do that without decreasing my annual giving sacrificially? Or some people may have simply reserves of their own, and we know that for some people, you'd say, look, I am stretched absolutely to the breaking point to give the tithe that I give each year. And then some people probably aren't even giving a tithe, and a part of Christian stewardship would be to get up to that tithe. And then there's others who have the capability to give more than that. And what everyone has told us is $12 million.

55:54 You know, Generis has said, yeah, that's not going to be a walk in the park. You're not going to just roll out of bed and you're going to get that. But we think with your church and the health of your church, that it's a number that can be met with God's help. All right, let me just give one more regarding… Yeah, maybe one last question. Yeah, one more regarding funding, and I think you've addressed this, Kevin, but maybe you want to just piggyback on what you said before. Will portions of the building project or building campaign be given to global mission efforts, particularly to frontier people groups or the least reached peoples and places? I think if I understand the question, we do not have into that budget a percentage of the project costs to go towards a missions tithe or further missions. One could do that, but we think we're continuing to give to missions, and we have other mechanisms to give through to missions, and anyone can give to Faith Promise to increase that missions giving. So, this is a total project costs for this project and we want to be all in on missions at the same time but it goes through a different channel all right you have been patient it's one o'clock i'm sure we didn't get to all your questions this will be up mimi thank you caleb paul lots of people matt thank you this will be up probably later this afternoon already there so you can go and find the banner and look at all of these slides. Let me close this in prayer. Father in heaven, we do not take for granted that this is a major undertaking, and we need your help. We thank you for the unity you have given so far, the many capable men and women with skills in these very areas, and through lots of conversations, and back and forth, and negotiation, and compromise to bring us to this point with a unanimous vote from our session and now to share this what we hope will be exciting news. Lord, we want to be humble before you, so may we decrease, may Christ increase, and we pray

58:04 that you would give us unity of mind and heart and purpose as a congregation. Continue to bless us as you have so much more than we deserve. Go with us now, in Jesus' name. Amen.