This Sunday is one of my favorites.
Visioning Sunday.
Each year Unity sets one Sunday aside for prayer and discernment.
The central questions:
What is God’s will for Unity in the upcoming year?
What is God’s vision for this church in 2021?
This is our chance to pause, reflect, and dream.
Pause from the busyness of your routine and reflect on how you saw God work through Unity in 2020. Then take some time in prayer and dream about what God may yet do through Unity in 2021.
Visioning Sunday kicks off our annual Stewardship Campaign. The campaign is our opportunity to create a budget that will allow us to fulfill God’s vision for Unity.
The theme for this years campaign is Faithful. It comes from Matthew 25.
“Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”
-Matthew 25:23
What does it mean to be faithful?
To be faithful is to be loyal and devoted to a particular cause.
A person can be faithful to his spouse because he has remained loyal and devoted to his spouse.
A person can be faithful to an ideal when that person commits to living out that particular ideal in all aspects of his or her life.
A person can be faithful to God when that person’s life is wholly devoted to God.
God asks us to be faithful (i.e. wholly devoted) to God.
In addition, God asks us to be faithful with what we have been given by God.
God says that those who have been faithful with a few things, more will be trusted to that person.
This means choosing to act in faith with the gifts and abilities that God has given to you. It means choosing to live by faith with what God has gifted to you.
It’s like God is saying, “If you can act in faith with a small amount, then you will get the opportunity to act in faith with a larger amount.”
Here’s the bottom line: God has given each one of us gifts, talents, and opportunities. To be faithful is to dedicate these gifts for God’s service in the world. It is our privilege and responsibility to be faithful with the gifts that God has given to us.
As a part of Unity’s vision for 2021, we ask that each person turns in an Estimate of Giving Card.
This is an estimate of what you believe you can contribute to the ministry of the church in 2021.
Note— this is not binding in any way. This is simply an estimate.
This year, I personally am asking each person to contribute to both the General Fund and the Building Fund.
The General Fund is the budget for…pretty much everything in the church. Facilities, staff, outreach, ministries, all of it.
All of it…except for the building loan.
Unity built an absolutely beautiful sanctuary and fellowship hall in 2005. By the end of the year we will have about 8 years remaining on our building loan and roughly about $900,000 left on the loan.
Currently we pay $10,000 per month on the mortgage payment for the loan.
I have a goal for us and I believe we can accomplish it together: to pay off the loan in 4 years.
If we pay off the loan in 4 years, we will save $81,000 in interest payments. Wow!
This is $81,000 that will be saved and can be used directly for ministry.
We need your help. The only way we can do this is we have everyone on board.
Here’s what you can do to join us:
Fill out your Estimate of Giving Card and please give to the general operating funds as you normally do.
But then, please commit an additional amount to the building fund as well. This second gift could be given weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even as a one-time gift–whatever you feel God calling you to do.
We will need to pay $20,000 a month to reach our goal of paying off the loan in 4 years.
We can do this, but the only way to do this is to do it together!
All church members were mailed an Estimate of Giving Card this week. There are three ways for you to turn these in.
- You can mail it to the church office: 8210 Unity Church Rd. Denver, NC 28037.
- You can drop it off in the sealed container outside the sanctuary doors nearest to the parking lot.
- You can fill it out on-line at www.unitypres.org/estimated
Let’s see what we can do together!
“See” you on Sunday!
-Pastor David
