Stuff You Need to Know
We want your money.
I mean, hey, there’s no sense beating around the bush, right? We didn’t start this Substack to gather an online community (though we’d love to hear from you) or to share our views on current events (although there will probably be a little of that) or to launch our media careers (we’ll pause here while those who actually know us laugh out loud...Are you done? OK, moving on). We started this Substack because we’re trying to raise as much money as possible.
We’re going to use that money to build an Orthodox Christian temple.
In Holy Orthodoxy, we do not refer to the facilities in which we pray as worship centers or auditoriums or even churches. We call them temples. And we want to erect a temple that will be beautiful and that will last for centuries.
We’re going to use all that money to build a temple.
And when we say “all”, we mean “all”. There are five of us who are involved in this project in various capacities (some of us write; some of us take care of the technology; some of us make snide comments), but none of us are going to be receiving any sort of financial compensation or any other sort of consideration for this work. After Mr. Substack gets his cut for the platform, all the money we collect will go non-stop into the St John the Forerunner Building Fund.
And, yes, the name of our parish is St John the Forerunner.
The Forerunner is the same guy all you American Christians refer to as John the Baptist. He’s the patron saint of our community.
We belong to the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. We have five beautiful acres in the City of Cedar Park, Texas, which is one of the Totally Uncool Suburbs of Austin, the Uber-Hip Capital of Texas.
But I’ll bet you’re wondering how much money we need to raise.
Thanks for asking. The temple that we are building—and the parking that we will need to support that structure—is all going to cost about four and a half million dollars. We currently have half a million dollars in the bank, and our parish has pledged a million and a half dollars, which will be collected over a three-year period (and even though we’re only one year into that three-year time frame, and we’ve already received 43% of what has been pledged). A well-known international financial institution has indicated that they will loan us one and a half million. So, at this point, in the life of our parish, we have roughly three and a half million dollars in the bank or in various commitments, but we still need to raise well over a million dollars to fund the entire project.
And, sure, we could just wait and try to cover that shortfall as our parish grows, but we’re totally out of room.
Like most Orthodox communities in this country, we have experienced phenomenal growth in the last few years. There are currently over 500 folks in our parish, but the reality is that we don’t have any wealthy members. We have a lot of young folks who are very generous, but there’s just not a lot of cash laying around. And we’ve economized in just about every way we can: All of our clergymen have secular jobs. We have several additional, part-part-time employees, but no one has an office or workspace—or even a lot of storage space—on our property. Every bit of building on our campus is dedicated to either the Divine Services or to the education of our children.
So, we figured it’s time to get creative.
And this is us, getting creative. If you need information that isn’t covered in this section, be sure and get in touch with us. We will be happy to talk with you. We would also very much appreciate your prayers.
As for the rest, we’ll look forward to ‘seeing you in the Stack’, as the kids say, and we’ll let Tom and Cuba take it all home for us: