100th Anniversary Gift

Psalm 119:105  “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
 
Our mission statement exclaims, “We are a welcoming and growing community of faith busy making Christ known to the world.” As members and participants in this community of faith, we seek to live out this mission every day by living out our core values, expressed by the following acrostic: Simply What Every Christian Should Do. We fulfill our mission and convey our values to others in a variety of explicit and deliberate ways:

• Service
• Worship
• Evangelism
• Community
• Stewardship
• Discipleship

 
As we continue to celebrate our 100th Anniversary as a faith community and prepare to begin our 2nd century of ministry together, the Church Council feels it is important to continue to invest in ourselves to sustain our abilities to live out our mission. Mother Teresa taught, “If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.” To that end, we are excited to announce that as part of our 100th Anniversary celebration, we would like to present ourselves with a gift – a gift that will equip us to send out and share the Good News of God’s love, mercy, and grace in and through our Lord Jesus Christ even further than we do today. We believe that the utilization of this gift, and the invitation to all of us to participate in the raising of the resources to acquire this gift, will support the living out of all of our core values in some fashion. More to come on this in future blog posts.
 
The envisioned gift is the upgrading of our sanctuary sound system, video projection, and video streaming capabilities. Our desire in selecting this gift is to enhance the delivery of high quality and inspiring worship experiences for people worshipping at St. Luke’s, both in-person and on-line. Likely inclusions in this gift are:

• Adding a second screen and projector on the pulpit side of the sanctuary.
• Adding a monitor for those leading worship so they can see what is being projected on the screens.
• Adding a 4th camera to enhance our live streaming and recording capabilities.
• Updating our current amplification equipment to improve both in-person and on-line sound quality.
• Providing additional technical training for our volunteer sound and video technicians.

As has been our historical practice, we will also gift 10% of whatever gift donations are pledged and received to one of our mission partner ministries.
 
More specific information on the elements of the gift, our mission partner gifting plan, and the giving opportunities to support the 100th Anniversary gift and mission partner gifting will be shared in future communications. In the meantime, please be praying about how you might contribute a financial gift toward the acquisition of the gift and/or to the utilization of the gift through sharing your time and talents as a volunteer worship leader, musician/singer, audio or video technician and as a regular participant in worship. If you wish to donate financially toward the gift right away, you can make a donation of cash or by check made out to St. Luke’s Lutheran Church and designate your contribution to the 100th Anniversary gift either on the envelope or in the memo section of the check. You can also go to the following link, press the Simply Giving button at the bottom of the page, find the donation box for the 100th Anniversary Gift, and follow the prompts - www.stlukesbloomington.org/100th-anniversary.html. Thank you in advance for your prayerful consideration of support.

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