We are blessed to be back in our church, again whole with our enlivening faith environment. This new persistent message: Finish the Church, is our final push of the Capital Campaign, to complete the transformation of the entire campus and ensure our success for the next 30 years. While we have come far already, we will all need to work together to complete our vision of the new Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church.
The Parish Family of Saint John truly believed in the Mission of our Capital Campaign: Build Our Future, Serve Our Past. Our vision was to become a beacon of community and faith here in Naples, renewed with our Life Center and campus as a “new wineskin” of Catholic engagement for decades to come. We were following the mindset of Pope Francis, clearly showcased in the above Tweet: “The elderly and the young together. This is the sign that a people cherishes life…”. As such, we defined a strategy of incremental improvements to Saint John that could be achieved based on the success of the campaign.
By the numbers, our Parish responded to this vision with substantial support. When we finally closed the initial campaign on March 8, 2018 (the three-year window allowed by the Diocese at the time), we had collected an impressive $11 million. And not just a small fraction of our Parish gave to this campaign. We had over 2,000 individuals and families participate, which is well over half of our Parish Family. The normal Catholic Church campaign currently has 27% participation in the US. We shattered that statistic and we easily gathered enough for the construction of the Pulte Family Life Center, and much more to shape the future of the campus:
We were just about to identify the additional partial campus improvements we could move forward with the success of our campaign in September of 2017, when we had a visitor… Hurricane Irma.
We need your help to Finish the Church. In the next few weeks, you will be hearing more about this last push for our Capital Campaign and how you may be able to prayerfully consider assisting us with our effort.