Our Capital Campaign and Strategic Plan
The One Faith - One Family - One Future Capital Campaign
With permission from our bishop, we announced in late June of this year (2018) our capital campaign in order to help our parish move forward according to the Diocesan Strategic Plan. Briefly, we would like to raise $4.25 million as our "cornerstone" goal. Meeting this goal will enable us to construct a new worship space on our new property with a minimum of long-term debt and at the same time help meet the many updates needed in our Pine River church building. However, we are really striving for our "miracle" goal of $7 million which will allow us to complete the construction of our entire parish facility with little long-term dept. The campaign officially began on Sunday evening, July 22 with a special kick off celebration held at St. Christopher's in Nisswa. For an overview of our campaign, please watch our video: http://player.vimeo.com/video/280451406
We have a website dedicated to our important campaign. Please visit us at http://www.churchcampaign.org/pequot . Please ask Our Lady for her intercession that we may move forward into the future as one faith and one family. Heaven's blessings!
The Diocesan Strategic Plan
As our parishioners are now very much aware, our three separate parishes have combined into one parish. The new name of our merged parish is "Our Lady of the Lakes Parish" as voted by our parishioners. Recall that during the summer of 2016 we held five town hall meetings in order to obtain feedback to our proposed changes to the Diocesan Strategic Plan. The plan promulgated in 2012 called for our then three churches to combine into one new church. We proposed to the Diocesan Presbyteral Council that the Strategic Plan be amended to keeping two churches in our parish rather than the proposed one. After hearing the many comments and concerns of our parishioners during the town hall meetings, the overwhelming majority of people agreed with the idea of having two churches rather than just one. Further, it was only logical that Our Lady of Lourdes in Pine River remain open while St. Christopher's in Nisswa and St. Alice in Pequot Lakes eventually close and move into one new church building at some point in the future. This new proposal was approved by Bishop Sirba in the Fall of 2016.
Further, because of the Highway 371 expansion currently taking place, we thought it timely to look for possible sites for our new church building. Again, there was a clear consensus that the new church would have to be on or very near to Highway 371 and someplace between Pequot Lakes and Nisswa. With these parameters our Land Search Committee began to look for available lots in the late summer of 2016. We are happy to announce that, with the appropriate Diocesan approval, our parish purchased this past December, 40 acres of wooded land on County Road 29, just one-half mile west of 371.
