Commonly asked questions and answers regarding the Pathway to Our Clear Vision.
Trietsch celebrates 40 years of ministry in 2023. In that time, we have reached thousands of people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we envision reaching thousands more. Our clear vision calls us to envision a community where people matter, brokenness is healed and love is lived. This vision is our desired outcome of our mission to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. One tool that we use to achieve our mission and vision are our facilities. Our facility needs to be well taken care of and prepared for the next generation. The reconfiguration and regeneration of our facilities is a step on The Pathway to our Clear Vision.
In 40 years we have built quite a complex to achieve ministry. Some parts of our facility are 40 years old. The newest portion is now 11 years old. We have serious and expensive deferred maintenance that must be addressed and an underutilized facility. We must give attention to the regeneration and reconfiguration of our complex to better prepare for the next generation of ministry.
The first 20 years of Trietsch saw meteoric growth and debt demanded by needed space for ministry. Over the last 20 years, we have built only one component of our facility (FLC) and incurred too much debt in doing so. For years we’ve needed to give attention to debt reduction rather than keeping the overall condition of our entire facility healthy. Good news: we have paid down $5 million in debt over these last few years. Bad news: we have an aging, deteriorating, and outdated facility that needs regeneration and reconfiguration for the next generation.
Your church leadership is committed to (see info at www.tmumc.org/allchurch):
- Completing all deferred maintenance issues ($5.5 million estimated)
- Reconfiguring the current main building to allow for dedicated ministry space for youth, children, adult, fitness, worship, gathering/welcome, and administration ($6 million estimated).
- No additional or new debt to achieve this goal.
As you can see at www.tmumc.org/allchurch, our church leadership has done its due diligence to determine a Pathway to our Clear Vision. Over the last 15 months, your Trustees (property stewards) and Leadership Board have invested innumerable hours with outside consultants (Horizons, Building Solutions and BBA Architects) to determine a path forward. The consultants offered data, experience, industry standards, expertise, educated opinion and offered twelve different viable options for a pathway to our clear vision. The sale of the FLC was selected as the most feasible option to achieve our goal without incurring an additional debt.
The twelve options can be broken down into four primary categories.
Option 1: Do nothing and allow the building to deteriorate. This option was unanimously rejected by leadership.
Option 2: Work only on the $5.5 million deferred maintenance. This option required additional debt or a generosity campaign larger than our church has ever done. It would provide no facility updating. This option was unanimously rejected by leadership.
Option 3: Relocate our church. Relocations requires selling the facility and a generosity campaign to raise funds to purchase land and build a new facility. The architect presented three different sized campuses. The smallest of which would be less than 50% of our current campus size and cost $40 million to build. This is an unfeasible option.
Option 4: Sell some portion of our campus (main or FLC) and reconfigure. The consultants costed out both options. Selling the main campus to expand the FLC to be more church-like was almost as expensive as a relocation and would require removing the playing fields. Selling the FLC to reconfigure the main campus had multiple options for reconfiguration. This option is the most financially feasible and is the one that was selected.
The FLC property: FLC building, surrounding parking (everything south of the fence enclosed chiller units), lighted and irrigated fields, Veteran’s Memorial Plaza and the surrounding wrought iron fence. Portions of this may be negotiated out of the sale. A potential leaseback agreement may be secured for the use of FLC for a designated period.
The cost of deferred maintenance is $5.5 million. The projected cost of reconfiguration of the main campus is over $6 million. Neither can be reached by raising capital through a generosity campaign. Your leadership is committed to incurring no additional debt. If we don’t sell the FLC, we do not have enough capital for deferred maintenance or facility reconfiguration. The sale of the FLC would also save additional revenue moving forward through cost elimination.
The proposal will be to sell the FLC to provide for deferred maintenance and reconfigure the main building. The FLC is currently on the market, and we will conduct a generosity campaign to raise funds to cover the difference between the proceeds of sale and the cost of reconfiguration. The generosity campaign will also allow for any funds raised that are above the actual cost of construction to go toward debt reduction for our current mortgage. No new or additional debt will be incurred for this proposal. Once the FLC sells we will have an immediate cash infusion (approx. $9 million) to begin work toward reconfiguration and deferred maintenance. We will use proceeds from the generosity campaign to bridge the gap of total construction costs.