Dear friends in Christ,

What could you do with a million dollars? Chances are you've thought about it. Would you buy a spacious house, a luxury yacht, an Italian sports car, travel the world, all of the above? It's not too tough to think about what you could do with a million dollars. But what could you do with a million dollars that would make an eternal difference in the lives of hundreds of people? The answer to that question takes a little more thought but it is an infinitely more important and consequential question to consider.

Lately at St. Michael we have been thinking a great deal about what we could do with a million dollars, particularly that million dollars that we still owe on the Family Life Center which we dedicated in the spring of 2004. It has served us very well since then as an essential tool by which we serve the Lord. It has made possible a vast improvement in our Christian fellowship through the gymnasium and commercial kitchen. It has aided in the Christian discipleship of children, youth, and adults through the library, the youth room, the nursery, and many classrooms which are used by Sunday School, St.Mike@Nite, Stephen Ministry, Board meetings, and St. Michael Lutheran School. It has given us a new front door, a new parking lot in full view of Oakland drive, great landscaping, a highly visible and flexible sign on the street, and all in all a much higher profile in the community.

We also continue to enjoy in the Family Life Center a growing population of students who attend St. Michael Lutheran School and Christ for Kids Childcare Center. To date we have 220 students in pre-kindergarten through 7th grade and about half of them are not members of our congregation. Yet since our school began about 8 years ago, we have added over 150 new members as a result of it, plus dozens of children and adults have been baptized into the Christian faith for the first time. Anyone who attends a school Christmas program, a girls volleyball game, or a Friday morning chapel will immediately be moved to give glory to God for all that He has accomplished among us in such a short time.

Thanks to many generous donors and a string of minor miracles the Lord provided us with all the site improvement and the 22,000 square foot Family Life Center for less than 2,000,000. Through our "Gather a Harvest" campaign of 2003-2005, the Lord blessed us with about $750,000 of pledges and since then this has been combined with many other generous gifts from our members and some matching funds from supportive corporations that have enabled us to whittle down the mortgage to its current balance. Furthermore, The Church Extension Fund (CEF) of our Michigan District of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod provided us with a very favorable interest rate on the mortgage, especially thanks to our many members who investing with CEF an amount equal to what we needed to borrow.

But we are not finished yet. The current debt repayment costs our congregation about $8,200 a month from our operational budget, money that could be used for much needed ministry in other areas. Furthermore, when the Family Life Center first opened in 2004 we only needed to move three grades into its nine classrooms. This left us with lots of space for a fine nursery during worship and meeting times, and a youth room for junior and senior highers. Furthermore, any other available vacant classrooms we immediately filled with preschoolers whenever we chose to open a new opportunity to the congregation and community. But now as the upper grades of the school grow, the day is fast approaching when we are going to have to displace the pre-school and the youth ministry unless we do something soon.

Consequently, we formed a Blue Ribbon Committee to study our needs carefully and with their recommendation and the approval of our Voters Assembly, our Building Committee engaged the services of an architect who drafted some preliminary plans for a new wing attached to the north face of the Family Life Center. This new addition would be designed to accommodate an additional classroom for the school, all the space needed for the pre-school, and also room for a new venture, namely an infant/toddler childcare program.

Another exciting opportunity that a new wing on the building would provide, would be the renovation of the historic wing that we originally built in the early 1960s as our church sanctuary. Since the construction of our new sanctuary in 1990, this old wing has served a variety of purposes but currently it is the location for the Christ for Kids Childcare Center and for early childhood Sunday School. With the addition of a new wing for this purpose, the old wing would be freed up to be used in a new way, perhaps as a community youth center that could also serve as an informal worship space.

We would also be able to reconfigure the floor plan to provide for a new state of the art office complex. While the congregation has not yet authorized the go ahead of this construction, the elimination of our existing debt makes it possible for us to consider this kind of exciting expansion of our ministry.

That we might move our mission forward in these ways, we have entered into a capital stewardship emphasis called "Mission Forward" for the purpose of raising the necessary funds to pay off the existing mortgage and to posture ourselves financially to be able to consider building again. Furthermore, we are committed to tithe ten percent of all that is raised in "Mission Forward" to the 125th Anniversary thank offering of the Michigan District of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod called "The Future Is Now." This effort has a goal of raising ten million dollars, half of which is to be used for future church worker scholarship, and half for new mission starts in Michigan. It seems only fitting that the Michigan District that had once started our congregation as a new mission almost 50 years ago, would be the recipient of a significant gift form us in gratitude to God for all that He has accomplished among us and through us.

So that's what we would do if we had a million dollars. And the good news is that we have a million dollars already. It is within the resources of our many members whom our Lord has graciously and generously blessed. The only question that really remains is how much will each of us commit to God, over and above our regular contributions to the on-going ministry of St. Michael, so that He might continue to help us move His mission forward, and keep us making mighty messengers for Christ.

In His name,
Pastor Naumann