New Life Metropolitan Community Church in Norfolk recently announced kickoff of the second phase of a three-year Capital Campaign with the goal of purchasing their current church building. The campaign has a goal of $380,000. When fully realized, the fund will enable the church to pay off any mortgage incurred upon purchase of the building and allow the ministry to redirect those funds to programs.
In 2016, the Church moved from a rental space in Five Points to the current location at 1000 Sunset Drive. At that time, the Church was not in a financial position to purchase the new property, but two Church members were able to do so and agreed to lease it to New Life with first right of refusal when the owners were ready to sell.
Senior Pastor, Rev. Mark Byrd noted that, “Almost without exception, when New Life MCC folks first walked into our current church building, we heard folks say, ‘this feels like home.’ And certainly, in the five years we have been here this has been and continues to be a space and place we have come to love and feel at home in.”
The Capital Campaign was officially presented to the membership in November 2020, with an immediate goal of $100,00 as down payment for purchase pf the space. That goal was almost immediately met and surpassed (with over $134,000 raised to date) with contributions from congregation members, both past and present.
The current second phase includes a public ask to help MCC reach its second-year goal of $250,000. The third year and final goal is $380,000.
“Three days ago we celebrated 53 years of UFMCC worldwide and 44 years of MCC’s presence and ministry in Hampton Roads,” said Byrd. “Throughout this journey, we have been a very nomadic church, meeting together in homes, bars, professional office spaces, shared, borrowed, and rented spaces of other churches, hotels, converted theaters and commercial storefronts.”
“While we believe that the church is not defined by our physical space, there has been an ever-present longing desire to have a more settled home. And now we finally have that opportunity,” he said.
To assist the Campaign Committee in development and roll out of the campaign, the group hired Rev. Dr. Tom Melzoni, Senior Vice President of Horizons Stewardship, a consulting firm headquartered in Cabot, AR, and focused strictly on assisting churches with fundraising.
Founded in 1968, Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) has been at the vanguard of civil and human rights movements by addressing issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, economics, climate change, aging, and global human rights. MCC was the first to perform same-gender marriages and continues to be on the forefront of the struggle towards equality, equity & justice for the LGBTQAI+ community and others who are oppressed and marginalized both in local communities and around the world.
Download the Capital Campaign Case Statement here.
