I too would like to see us hire a youth minister, even a part time one (ie a student from Harding or CRC). We have a surplus right now and we need to keep a surplus in case we have some costly emergency repairs or some other problem that could take a large amount of money in a hurry. I would like for us to take part of the money right now and either make a loan or a one time donation to the student center to be enable us to go ahead and hire a campus minister so he can start building up the program, raising money to be able to operate, and also start raising money for the new building. I feel the sooner this happens, the better off this new ministry of ours will be. There are other things on your list I would like to see also, but I feel a youth minister and campus minister are the two most pressing needs.

Yes I think there is a need to have money in case of an emergency also. I also would like to see a bigger investment in the CCCM. I hope that we end up with so much money at the end of the year that we can do all of the things that many people would like to do.

I have been an advocate for a Youth Minister for a long time. I believe it to be a dire need for our congregation. I too, would like to see a campus minister for the CCCM; however, I would hope that would not need to be funded solely on monies from the Bono congregation, rather that a "community of churches" would step up to fund this important work. I also look forward (not this year) to a time when we can hire a Children's Minister to work with and grow our programs for children in the Nursery, Pre-school, and Elementary age groups.

I did not mean to imply that we would solely fund the CCCM ministers salary forever in addition to what we already give, the plans are for several congregations to step up and pay the expenses of the CCCM. Right now, we are about 2500 to 3000 dollars a month short of reaching the amount we need to fully pay the expenses including a ministers salary. Richard and others are trying to raise the money needed to fully fund the CCCM at this time. I feel that if we could over the next 3 or 4 months meet the difference in what is being given (either through a loan or donation) and what the total budget would need to be to fully fund the center, then we could go ahead and hire a minister and he could take over the fund raising (in effect raise the money to pay his salary), and our budgeted $500 per month would be all we would be paying toward the operation of the student center from that point on until we decide we can increase that amount.