CNW - 01/21/01 Headline

Millennium Campaign aims high
By Catholic New World Staff

A new gymnasium. Gathering space. An elevator to make a school accessible to people in wheelchairs. Those are among the projects parishes are paying for with money generated by the archdiocese’s $200 million capital campaign, Sharing Christ’s Gifts.

But parish leaders say the real benefits will come from getting more people involved and giving them a sense of stewardship for their church.

“We’ve had over 400 people involved in some way,” said St. Christina pastor Father Martin O’Donovan, whose parish includes about 3,000 families. “We’ve had 1,000 individuals or families make financial pledges, and 100 commit to praying for the success of the campaign.”

The parish has met its goal of raising $2.4 million towards a $3.1 million project that will include, new classrooms, a new parish center and gymnasium, remodeling one of the school buildings and adding an elevator.

That’s one of the goals of the campaign, said Auxiliary Bishop John R. Gorman, chairman of the millennium campaign steering committee.

“The whole emphasis is on stewardship and what stewardship is,” Bishop Gorman said. “The money part is secondary. It invites more and more people into the process.”

St. Christina is 40 parishes that have served as pilot projects for the campaign. The rest of the parishes are expected to run the campaign between now and the end of 2002; the 58 parishes in the first wave are starting to educate their members on the meaning of stewardship, said Raymond Coughlin, archdiocesan director of stewardship and development.

All the parishes are working with RSI, a Texas-based consulting company that is helping each parish figure out how much money it should try to raise and how to get people involved in the project.

Parishioners are asked to pledge their support, and are given three years to finish paying off their pledges.

Each parish will be asked to raise at least the amount it normally receives in its weekend collections in a year. Twenty percent of that amount will go to the archdiocese to help pay for capital improvements at Mundelein Seminary at University of St. Mary of the Lake, a new priests’ retirement residence and to struggling parishes. The rest of the money will stay in the parishes where it is collected.

Many of the pilot parishes have set their goals much higher than one year’s ordinary income. In the 40 pilot parishes, the total annual ordinary income is $28 million, Coughlin said. They have received $51 million in pledges.

Unlike most capital campaigns, the emphasis is not on the money as much as on parishioners’ responsibility to give back to God the gifts they have been given.

That was a difficult concept for some St. Christina parishioners, O’Donovan said.

“We had a lot of very uneasy people, who wanted us to tell them how much to give,” O’Donovan said. “A lot of people said, ‘Tell me what you want.’ But the idea is not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice.”

At St. Thomas of Villanova Parish in Palatine, another of the pilot parishes, members have been learning about stewardship for years.

“We’ve been a stewardship parish since at least 1988,” said Ron Schaefer, St. Thomas of Villanova’s business manager.

So far, St. Thomas parishioners have raised about $3.5 million of the $5 million the parish will need to build “God’s Great Room,” an expansion that will include an activity center and gymnasium, offices, meeting rooms and gathering space.

Parishioners have produced a video and brochures to educate people about the parish’s needs.
Schaefer said pledges are still coming in, so leaders hope to come closer to the total cost of the project. But the parish has already far exceeded the $2.5 million that consultants from RSI thought would be feasible for St. Thomas of Villanova. The parish’s usual annual income is about $1.1 million.

St. Christina parishioners have also exceeded expectations. With an annual ordinary income of about $900,000, the parish should have been able of raise about $1.8 million, according to the consultants. To raise $2.4 million, O’Donovan said, RSI consultants said the parish would have to get at least three or four gifts of $100,000 or more. It hasn’t received any gifts that large.

“We didn’t do it the Marshall Field’s way, we did it the Target way,” O’Donovan said.

Top