The Mission Project

The following email (and Ross Bartels response) was received before the on-line forum was up and running.

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I do so enjoy continuing to receive the emails in regard to LOTI. I am sure the congregation has given great thought to this sticky matter. I wonder how much discussion has occurred about whether, if the property is sold, what the chances are that there will be a "tear-down" and a monstrous big modern house will appear.

Lola Fick (May 23)

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Lola,

Thank you for your interest and your inquiry about the parsonage.

I am leading the group investigating the resources we have at LOTI to
fund our yet-to-be-determined mission. The parsonage sale is only one
possible resource to consider. The LOTI membership will ultimately need
to weigh all the information and decide what resources to solicit or
expend to further our mission.

As we compile a report to the membership of our resources we will try to
outline all significant pros and cons of utilizing our various
resources.

If we sell the parsonage we will lose control of the property. As long
as a subsequent renovation or rebuild meets all bylaws, the new owner
will have the freedom to change the property. This fact will be noted
in our report.

Best regards,

Ross Bartels (May 24)

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In regards to the Mission Project, I wonder if we really have enough members with the time and/or inclination to staff a project that requires much in the way of a regular volunteer committment. Many of the commitments that this congregation has already taken on require recruitment efforts, sometimes strenuous recruitment efforts, to find people to perform them:

- preparing and serving one shelter meal per month

- tutors for the 3 month pilot tutoring project

- 2 Leisure Time parties per year

- the annual Paint-A-Thon

as well as various church projects such as:

- worship service tasks (ushers, readers, communion assistants, altar servers, acolytes, worship assistants)

- Sunday School teachers

- Ministry Team members

- various meals (Coffee Hour, Reformation Dinner, Easter breakfast, Rally Day, Wednesdays in Lent, 20-Year Club)

- annual kitchen and grounds clean-ups

- the Sanctuary Lighting Project

I am not saying that people should be volunteering more. Everyone needs to make their own decisions regarding where and how they spend their time. Also, I am certainly aware of the draws that people have on their time. I'm just saying that the current reality is that we do not have lots of people clamoring for more opportunities to volunteer.

As for the pool of potential volunteers, although we have 258 adults listed as members, we have about 100 adults on an average Sunday (non-Easter and non-snowstorm) and 75 during the summer. I would estimate about 70 adults perform the above tasks and are the likely extent of the volunteer pool for any new Mission Project.

Financially, our expected income is about $50,000 below our budgeted annual expenses and benevolences. We have, temporarily, cut our monthly benevolence payment to the Minneapolis Area Synod in half due to lack of funds. If the new Mission Project requires additional money, I'm skeptical that it will be forthcoming.

The church's one main asset, the Parsonage, is no longer needed as a Parsonage.

If we keep the building and property to house a new Mission Project, it will continue to require maintenance and utility expenditures and possibly require remodelling to fit its new purpose.

If we rent it, it will require maintenance and taxes (since it will no longer be a tax exempt property) and possibly utility expenses.

Some have suggested selling the Parsonage and using the proceeds to purchase another property better situated and fitted for whatever the new Mission Project is. One of the reasons for this is the fear that if we sell the Parsonage and don't buy another property, but just spend the money, we will have lost a major asset and, once the money is gone, we will have nothing to show for it. Purchasing another property, however, does not change the fact that we will still have ongoing expenses and we'll still need volunteer help and, I suspect, our new asset will not be as easily sold as our current Parsonage if we later decide that we do not want to do whatever our new Mission is.

In 1967, the Neighborhood Involvement Program was created by several area churches, including Lake of the Isles. Several churches pooled their financial and human resources to provide services that no single church could manage on its own. None of the programs that are currently out there (e.g., NIP, Community Emergency Services, Joyce Food Shelf, Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation, Our Saviour's Housing, etc.) have contacted us to say that they do not need additional financial or volunteer help. Why not dedicate our efforts to strengthening one or more existing programs?

I think it might be better to sell the Parsonage, invest the proceeds in an endowment fund, and use the interest to increase our benevolence giving to existing programs. Though the Parsonage will be gone, the nest egg will be the enduring asset that we will still have. The Parsonage will be able to fund a Mission, or a variety of missions, indefinitely.

As to our volunteer resources, I think what we need is to find a way to encourage our members to invest their time and efforts into programs that are already up and running and crying out for volunteers.

These are not original ideas. I have heard other people say many of these things. I submit them merely because no one else has yet.

Bob Vaillancourt (June 8)

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Every one of the points you raise, as you point out, has been raised through the Mission Project process, and the Resources and Mission Working Groups are currently sifting through all of these facts to come up with some recommendations for the church on our social outreach mission and use of resources such as volunteers, finances, facilities, etc. The process also included inviting nearly all of the groups we currently support (and some we don't) to come and meet with us and tell us about their needs, etc.

There are challenges to increasing our social outreach to be sure, and it may not be the right time to do anything new, but we must make some key decisions that have been on the table for the Council to deal with for at least 3-4 years and perhaps much longer. Ironically, the very challenges of the budget, membership involvement, etc. that we currently face, along with the deteriorating condition of the Parsonage, require us to take action now. Maintaining the status quo with respect to these issues is the most risky path we can choose.

Many people feel as you do about creating an endowment (after paying off the mortgage), and the idea has much merit and would be relatively easy to do. It does not, however, address some of the concerns that many have expressed about selling the Parsonage, such as the following:

We would be selling a valuable asset that grows in value and is a low-risk investment (compared to financial markets)
We can borrow against property as we have done in the past
It is a "legacy" that we leave to future generations
It has utility beyond it's financial value

This last point is, of course, what has changed over the years and where most of the disagreement lies. We know that it is not financially beneficial to the church or pastors to renovate it as a Parsonage, so people are looking for other uses that make more sense. Selling the property and purchasing another property that is fully utilized for our mission would solve the last issue and preserve the others. A new property may well require ongoing maintenance and volunteer support, but it would be for a good purpose and I don't anticipate any problems with this. The biggest problems we have in maintaining the Parsonage are that needs much more that normal preventative maintenance and we don't know why we would go through the effort an expense of renovating it, so it is difficult to recruit volunteers. We also have the burden of a mortgage to support.

My hope is that we can find a way to meet as many of our congregation's needs through the decision-making process we are currently engaged in and find a win-win solution to satisfy as many goals and concerns as possible. In my mind, this would be one of 2 options: 1) come up with an inspirational cause/use for the Parsonage property that we have - along with the resources to fix or replace the building, or 2) sell the property and purchase another property that meets our criteria and can create a new legacy for LOTI. I consider the endowment idea a reasonable fallback if we cannot achieve either of these other possibilities.

Jeff Hickstein (June 8)

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Among many other concerns I have about selling the parsonage (and I might list them some other time), a big concern for me is the fact that the parsonage property is immediately adjacent to the church building and that as such, it is ideally suited for a future expansion of the church. As our congregation grows and as the need for children's/youth programs grows, we may well find ourselves in a position of needing more space within the church building or extra space in an adjacent building. The people who bought the parsonage property were cognizant of this potential need and we must be very cognizant of the strategic mistake we might make by giving up this expansion option.

Susanne Haas (June 11)

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Bob, I agree with you 100%. When discussion first came up about selling the parsonage, I didn't think we should do that. But after doing some serious thinking about it for the last several months, my feeling has totally changed. Pastor Gayle's sermon a couple weeks ago really hit it on the head. Basically, it was about how we get so bogged down with our "stuff" and that's what has happened with LOTI. Right now that house is the "stuff " that's costing us a lot of money that could be spent on mission work and in other areas that are more important. We will never be a Mount Olivet and I don't believe we want to be. What we do want is to hire a youth pastor to help us keep the young families we have, focus on mission work, etc. We could use the money from the sale to remodel the third level so it can have a multi-purpose use--teenage counseling center, Sunday School rooms and youth group get-togethers. We do have plenty of space. Also, we need to concentrate on maintenance of the church itself. It's a beautiful building but it desperately needs some work done on it. If we put most of the money from the sale of the house into an endowment fund, we'd have enough to fund all of these projects and more.

Sorry to get carried away but it bothers me that we're always so far behind financially. I hope we can come to the right decision without tearing the congregation apart.

Linda Nelson (August 14)

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Dear Friends,

A minor point of rhetoric:

The phrase, "Once it's gone, we'll never get it back again" seems to have the unspoken subtext that we are going to sell the parsonage, spend all of the money (probably foolishly), and have nothing to show for it. No one has suggested, and this congregation would never approve, such an idea.

The idea that many (most?) of us have is to convert an under-utilized resource into a better-utilized form to benefit those in need by, for example:

          - partnering with another organization to provide financing for a large mission project;
          - establishing an endowment to provide additional benevolences to one or more organizations; or
          - some combination of the two.

The reality is, "Once it's gone, we'll be able to accomplish a lot more for a lot more people."

Bob Vaillancourt (January 15)

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The upcoming vote, as John and I see it, is a decision to:

enhance our already affluent lifestyle at LOTI on the posh lake;
or

maintain our already affluent lifestyle at LOTI AND follow Jesus teachings by helping the youth of our congregation/neighborhood/city.

Are we an investment club
or

Are we a Christian church?

Are we in fear mode
or

Are we brave and caring and willing to follow Jesus?

We are fooling ourselves if we think by having a youth minister living in the property we will gain more youth....our congregation has been in that neighborhood for 50+ years and the people of the neighborhood know it and know who we are.
In case people don't know, Bobbi and Hank French, our former pastor and his wife, and a number of people from the congregation TRIED TO DEVELOP A LARGE TEEN/ ADOLESCENT GATHERING ROOM IN THE PARSONAGE AND IT NEVER GOT OFF THE GROUND!!!!!!!

John and I believe that selling the property and establishing an endowment fund is the best thing to do with the proceeds! If a reasonable offer is received we can use the money to continue the desperately needed work for the youth of our community/city/etc as well as other desperately needed projects how can we not respond?. To sit on money and not make it do God's work -- following Jesus' examples of how to walk in this world -- is absolutely unconsionable in this environment of need. We at LOTI are so fortunate in our lives, how can we possibly sit and niggle over this while people around us are in such need? Let us bow our heads in prayer and ask God to guide us and give us wisdom in how to follow Jesus.

John and I are not interested in belonging to an investment club that goes by the name of an organized religious group. When I came to LOTI almost 15 years ago (John more than 45 years ago) I was so impressed by the fact that for being a small congregation, they had a big, caring heart and concern for the community. I heard a lot of conversation that revolved around how to help those less fortunate and over the years a lot of talk about how the parsonage property could be a good means to achieve that end.

Now we talk a lot about how to have the biggest profit and bang for the buck and we speak in loud voices about fear of loss and potential profit. Ish, yuck, why aren't we speaking in loud voices for those youth who have real fears -- of freezing to death on the streets or not having anything to eat (oh, wait, maybe they brought it all on themselves and deserve it!) Let them just figure their own way out, steal some food, or take drugs to forget their problems or just die and leave us alone. We need to take care of ourselves, enhance our building(s), make our exclusive investment club a finer place that others will want to join, yeah, that's it.

So what if Jesus doesn't live here anymore, He and His bunch were kind of scraggling looking and acting anyway and damn it all anyway, they were always trying to change the status quo!!!

Anonymously,
Judy Bigelow & John Hanson (January 15)

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