We are asking you to prayerfully consider joining your Thanksgiving Church family in making two commitments. The first is a relational commitment to be praying for and developing a relationship with at least one person in your life that doesn’t yet know Jesus. This is a crucial component of Thanksgiving Church’s DNA of living a lifestyle of Up (relationship with God), In (relationship with our church family), and Out (relationship with our ones). The second is a sacrificial financial commitment above and beyond your regular giving to the church. We are not asking for equal gifts from all in our church family, but rather equal sacrifice consistent with how God has blessed you financially. We are hoping for 100% participation with these two commitments from our church family!

Our pastors, senior staff leaders, and church council engaged in a multi-year process to establish the Taking New Ground vision for Thanksgiving Church. As a part of this vision several initiative teams have been launched exploring things like how we welcome our guests on the weekend, how we structure worship services, retooling our church campus buildings, online presence, and so much more. The Now Vision Campaign is the next step in Taking New Ground.

Our mission at Thanksgiving is to be a church that reaches out and gathers people into God’s family as well as equips disciples. Accomplishing that mission involves us following the lead of Jesus in meeting people where they are and allowing the Holy Spirit to show them how and where to move. There is much that can facilitate that process and much that can hinder it. We believe the Lighthouse acquisition and the campus changes will better facilitate gathering, connecting, equipping, and training those whom God is calling.

One need that we believe will remain for the church and those we serve going forward is space for connection, community, and worshipping together. This need will be even more prevalent considering the challenges we have all faced the past few years. The retooling of our campus will add significant multi-use community space, a more dynamic and accessible worship experience on the weekends, and will remove obstacles to connecting with each other and our guests on campus. We believe these changes and upgrades to the campus are vital in our mission to reach one more for Jesus and connect with our community. Several initiative teams, prayer and discernment retreats, reading and research, discussions with professional consultants and architects, and the touring of other church campuses have contributed to each of the planned changes to our campus.

Our leadership team diligently sought a way to approach this project in phases. However, due to the nature of these campus changes, how they all interconnect, it makes more fiscal sense to accomplish them together in one project. Responsible adjustments to the project details will be made if needed.

We are trusting God to provide all that we need for this campaign. We do anticipate the plan will involve some long-term debt. This will be done responsibly just as it has in the past at Thanksgiving Church. Interest rates remaining low will help allow for manageable payments that should be fully funded with campaign dollars. The debt and financing plan to accomplish the Now Vision Campaign will be similar to when our church added the Family Life Center and associated space nearly 20 years ago.

Our campaign goal of $2.5 million will fund approximately one third of the campus changes we have planned, so we do anticipate needing additional campaigns in the years to come. This plan is consistent with previous campaigns to fund campus changes most notably the addition of the Family Life Center (now called the Worship Center and our Explorers lower level). God has always worked through this congregation to bring His vision to reality.

After witnessing the sacrificial gift of our church family work will begin. We have been working with our architect for some time now, and the project will start as soon as our contractor’s schedule allows.

Our leadership team will work diligently to keep disruptions to our current worship services and weekly events to a minimum. We will need to adapt in some ways as construction progresses, and we see those temporary adaptations as a sacrifice we can all make to take new ground for the Kingdom!