For over fifty years, Good Shepherd has been a caring community that cares for real people in real places in real ways.
During the past five years, Good Shepherd has been growing. Quietly, sometimes fitfully, but nevertheless steadily, our community has grown, even as our founding generation has died.
As a caring community we have grown in depth as well as breadth. In our own distinctive way we care for each other and for the world: for our kids in their education as young followers of Christ; our teenagers as they take their faith into the world in Central America and South Dakota and Harlan, Kentucky; for our spiritual development as adults in EFM and at Good Shepherd and the World; for our growth in the Holy Habits of tithing, prayer, study and Sabbath time; for our compassionate care for our members through Stephen Ministry and Eucharistic Visitors, Martha’s Kitchen and the Men’s Club; for the hungry who need food and get it from Fish, for the homeless who need shelter and get it through Family Promise, and for public school teachers who simply need friendly supporters. Good Shepherd cares.
Now the time has come for us to care about our own home and to build strongly for our own future as a worshipping congregation.
During the past six months the vestry has studied the real needs of a beautiful church that was built in the 1950’s. We love our home but as one vestry member said, its an old house. Our church now needs the loving care we have always shown to others.
During the year ahead, we will give our church the care it needs and deserves. That care will take many forms, from building new supports to protect our wonderful stained glass windows, to making the altar accessible for those who prefer not to use stairs, to insuring that when its hot we stay cool and when its cold we stay warm, to finding and repairing the persistent leak in the entrance way and parish hall and oh yes, repaving the parking lot. These and other tasks are important for the future of the church.
But the single most important investment we can make in the future of Good Shepherd is to invest in a high quality organ.
Churches grow because they have great music, great teaching and great preaching.
Although Christian worship will always honor silence as a means to approach God, for nearly two thousand years, great worship has been led by great music.
Because of the configuration of our A frame interior, installing a pipe organ, new or historic, in our present space has turned out to be difficult and perhaps impossible. But we can acquire, install and enjoy a high quality electronic organ to lead our worship now and well into our future.
Recently an informal group of vestry members and friends of music have listened to electronic organs in Knoxville and Atlanta. They have recommended that we buy an Allen Q 350 organ. The Q 350 has acoustic qualities that even Jim Rogers admires. Jim says that it has a remarkable sound and Jim is a demanding musician.
You can read about the Allen Q 350 either in the literature available in the church or online by clicking here. But the bottom line is that it costs $70,000 and if we order by Christmas we can probably have it installed by Easter. While $70,000 may sound like a lot, even a small pipe organ would cost twice that amount, not including annual maintenance.
I believe so strongly that acquiring a high quality organ is a critical investment in the future of Good Shepherd that I have pledged $10,000 from my personal savings to help buy it. [this is in addition to my personal pledge of $10,000 for the year 2012 as a tenth of my anticipated total income and benefits before taxes] I am not alone. Others have now pledged an additional $30,000. With a current total of nearly $40,000 we are over half way there.
If you too wish to help take a strong step into the future of the church, the vestry invites you to make your own contribution—in any amount—to the purchase of the new organ. You may make a contribution in any way and over any period of time that makes sense to you. After all, we are in this for the next fifty years.
With peace and blessings at Advent,
Charles
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