Shaping Our Future

Our congregation has great reason to celebrate the completion of two major capital fund campaigns to Save our Future and then to Shape Our Future. As our campus was a gift to us from those who worshiped here before us, now we have now added to that legacy for the future Christians at St Mary’s Church. The primary objective of this nine year effort was and is to provide facilities for young families and their children.

Now we see tangible results. The Parish Life Center is already a place of worship from 85 to 140 worshipers every Sunday while an equal number of parishioners worship in our church. Many young families worshiping in the PLC are new members of St Mary’s. The nursery holds more and more infants on Sundays and is busy during the week with programs for young mothers and their children. The Youth Ministry Building is now a home for our teen-ages and classrooms for children’s Christian education classes.

This all began nine years ago when Father Pittenger began the campaigns with a sermon that challenged the congregation to Save Our Future by purchasing the old Martin County Library. He led and inspired the congregation to buy the library and then rebuild it from the ground up. When that work was winding down, Father Pittenger again challenged the congregation to Shape Our Future with a new nursery and a building for young families and their children. For both campaigns he called on lay members to organize and lead the campaigns. Well over a hundred parishioners worked on the two campaigns and they deserve great thanks for their devotion to their church. The greatest praise goes to the hundreds of those who made sacrifices to contribute the funds that made this happen.

The result of this sacrifice is a well used Parish Life Center, a well equipped 2,400 square foot nursery and a three classroom, 3,400 square foot, Youth Ministry Building. Also there is a new parking lot with a brilliant lighting system and new roofs on the church, Smith Hall, the Administrative building and the little chapel in our courtyard.

Also, we have paid off the two bank mortgages that were needed to buy the old Martin County Library and to pay for the construction of the Parish Life Center. Those mortgages totaled $1,130,000.00.

The goal for Shaping Our Future included the enlargement of our church building. As planning for the work progressed to meet all of our needs, the complexity of the project and the cost of construction increased. The past hurricanes also increased the cost of construction materials. The result was that the planned construction work was not possible within the funds we expected to receive from pledges and gifts. An early estimate for the enlargement of the church was $550,000. Based on the final design the cost is now more than $1.2 million. The architect’s plans for that expansion have been completed. Therefore at some unknown date in the future when the need increases and funds are available, work could proceed.

We are close to the end of this project but there are a few more tasks to accomplish. The largest task is to pay our Endowment and Memorial Funds about $200,000 which we borrowed and have been paying back with interest.

Our goal for Shaping Our Future was to raise $3,400,000. Through the sacrifice and dedication of more than 275 families a total of $3,260,000 has been collected to pay for the construction and retirement of the mortgages. We are counting on approximately 90 parishioners that continue to contribute towards their pledges for a sum of a little over $300,000.