Organizational meeting for Baptist Build 2017 - Letter from Rick Beech

Hello Baptist Build Churches,

We had a very good debrief and planning meeting on August 31, 2016. Thank you to everyone who participated. The below is a summary of our meeting. 

We celebrated a successful Baptist Build 2016 project. Highlights were the joy of working with the partner families and growing the community between the churches. We celebrated raising $59,912 and volunteers contributing 2,423 hours of work.  We enjoyed the kick off worship, the youth and clergy/church staff work days. 

We set the goal of fully underwriting the $65,000 cost of the materials on a home and increasing the amount of volunteers to work on the home each Thursday, Friday and Saturday during the build from January 14-March 17. 

The next step is for each church to put Baptist Build 2017 in their 2017 budget. As suggested in the past, larger churches were asked to provide $6,500. Mid sized churches were asked to provide $3,000-$5,000. Smaller churches were asked to to set a goal of providing $100 or $200 per month ($1,200-$2,400 per year) toward the project.  If churches can keep me updated on their plans, I will keep everyone posted on the general status of our fundraising efforts.

We also discussed the importance of each church designating a volunteer coordinator. Coordinators are responsible for notifying Christin Murphy at christin.murphy@habitatwake.org of their desired work dates and then encouraging their church's volunteers to register for those days via http://vhub.at/baptistbuild2017.

Churches were asked to add the following dates to the church's 2017 ministry calendar and promote these dates widely in the church:

• Saturday, January 14: Wall-Building at 7:30 AM at Habitat Wake construction facility, 2615 Westinghouse Blvd., Raleigh 
• Saturday, January 14: Wall-Raising Ceremony at 11:45 AM, 5548 Neuse View Drive, Raleigh
• Sunday, January 15 Baptist Build Kick-Off Worship & Mass Choir at 2:30 PM at The Fountain of Raleigh, 9621 Six Forks Road
• Monday, January 16: Youth & College Work Day at 8:15 AM, 5548 Neuse View Drive, Raleigh
• Saturday, February 18: Young Adult Work Day at at 8:15 AM, 5548 Neuse View Drive, Raleigh
• Thursday, February 23: Clergy/Church Staff Work Morning from 8:15 AM- 12 noon, 5548 Neuse View Drive, Raleigh 
• Saturday, February 25:  Women Build Day at 8:15 AM, 5548 Neuse View Drive, Raleigh 
• Saturday, March 11: Choir Work Day at 8:15 AM, 5548 Neuse View Drive, Raleigh  

Everyone was encouraged to keep informed about the project through the Baptist Build Blog http://baptistbuild.blogspot.com/.  Attached is the sponsor packet which was reviewed at the meeting.

With enormous gratitude,

Rick Beech