Thanks to the Fellowship's Planning Committee for providing periodic updates on the UUFP Expansion progress via these Pulpit Minutes delivered during Sunday Service and UUFP publications.

Good morning. As Rebecca said, I’m Larry Campbell. I’m a member of the Planning Committee and the ChorUUs and a member of the Thursday morning Fellowship Circle.

On March 8, 2020, our congregation voted to move to a new facility to better fulfill our mission and vision. For those of you who have lost track of the months, weeks and days during the quarantine, that was ONE YEAR ago, almost to the day. It may seem as if nothing has happened since then, but that’s definitely not the case.

The Planning Committee, in coordination with the Real Estate Task Force, the Finance Committee, and the Board, has been working together diligently to help find a new home for UUFP that will provide the space we need to meet your vision – OUR VISION. That includes a larger sanctuary that will hold all of us for a single Sunday morning service, adequate office space, more classrooms, and space for our music ministry and community meetings, along with plenty of green space.

There are several things that have to happen before we can move into our new church home. We must put our current facility on the market and find a buyer. Along with that we must complete a Capital Campaign so we can show that we have, or at least WILL have, money available and/or promised. One or both of these must happen prior to making a firm offer on our new space, for which we are still earnestly searching. Finally, we must take out a mortgage with a lending institution to cover the difference between the purchase price and the combination of sale proceeds from our current facility and the Capital Campaign.

It’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle when you don’t know which piece you need to put into place first in order to insert the next piece. Discussions are ongoing as to the timetable of each piece of the puzzle. We are learning as we go, and helping each other.

You, as a member of our congregation, can be a part of this process by keeping your eyes peeled for any facility, whether it’s an existing church, an office building, or some other type of commercial property that you think might have the potential to serve as our new home, and then pass that information on to a member of the Planning Committee or the Real Estate Task Force. We have had a few members suggest that we should just build a new building that precisely meets our needs. However, because of the high cost of new construction, that option is simply not affordable.

Please become a part of the search for a property that could serve us well in the many years to come.

If you have any questions about any phase of this process, please feel free to contact me – Larry Campbell, Sandy Burkes-Campbell, Parker Stokes, Steve Kadar or Rebecca Wheeler. We’re all listed in the online Membership Directory.