September 07, 2025 | Stewardship
The Gifts We Will Nurture
For a year, we have listened and prayed and sought God’s call for this season in our congregation. We want to GROW by identifying the Gifts that God has already given us, and then removing the Roadblocks that hinder those gifts, seizing the Opportunities presented by those gifts, and sharing those gifts through acts of Witness.
In every conversation and deliberation, two themes have been repeated most passionately and consistently. These two gifts have defined Fairhope UMC for a long time; these gifts are the seeds from which our calling grows.
We exist for others, and we are an intergenerational church.
Promises are the soil of hope, and so we make these promises for 2026, so that our gifts may GROW.
roadblocks
As a church for others, we are eager to minister beyond our walls, but we also acknowledge that the size and sprawl of our campus can be a barrier to welcome others. In 2026, we will install new wayfinding signs throughout our campus and commission a new master plan to ensure our campus has visible, accessible, and inviting entrances for all ministries.
Sometimes, our strengths work against each other; one of our biggest strengths becomes a roadblock to our other biggest strength. The biggest roadblock to having truly intergenerational discipleship is that one generation is almost continually needed to serve another. So, in 2026 we will explore reorganizing our children’s Sunday school experience so that we can offer a spiritually rich environment without depending solely on the parents to volunteer during the Sunday School hour. We want every parent in this church to have the opportunity to be a full participant in an adult Sunday school.
OPPORTUNITIES
Our dual identity as a church where every generation can serve others gives us opportunity to grow our hospitality while simultaneously strengthening the bonds between us. In 2026, Project Zechariah will unite our oldest, youngest, newest, and most-tenured members in teams that serve together twice a year. Our Zechariah teams will ensure that every new member in our church immediately has a place where they belong, and it will also quadruple the number of volunteers dedicated to hospitality on Sunday mornings.
One of the most audacious ways we serve our neighbors is simply by making the CLC available to every generation in our community. In 2026, our remaining debt on the CLC will be less than a million dollars. We will retire that debt with a capital campaign that will free up more than $200,000 a year that we can reinvest in mission and ministry.
Witness
Throughout our history, we have been most united across the generations when we served something bigger than ourselves. For 2026, our Nominations committee will name our first Committee on Church and Society, with a special focus on housing in Baldwin County. This team will visit ministries throughout our region to learn how other churches are alleviating homelessness in their communities. In September 2026, this team will provide a plan for our church to lead the way in ministry to the homeless in Baldwin County. The committee will provide our children, youth, and Sunday school ministries with ways to make a difference through regular service projects and fundraisers. This vision will require more than a single year, but we will see it through.
As a church for others, we also commit ourselves to building the church universal. We are eager to build new partnerships with our neighboring congregations. Because we want a true partnership in which we listen as much as we lead, we cannot yet promise what we will accomplish together with the churches of Fairhope. As we look for these partners in 2026, we commit to pray for a different local church, by name, in our worship every month.
