NEXT Events

We are asking you to prayerfully consider joining your Thanksgiving Church family in making two commitments. The first is a relational commitment to be praying for and intentionally engaging with someONE. This is someone you are committing to invest in as a friend. This is someone who either has not experienced the love of Jesus or who is not currently walking with Jesus in a community of believers. The second is a sacrificial financial commitment above and beyond your regular giving to the church. We are not asking for equal gifts from all in our church family, but rather equal sacrifice consistent with how God has blessed you financially. Our leadership team is praying for 100% participation with these two commitments from our church family.

Yes, we are presently at the end of a three-year vision campaign called “NOW”. The NEXT Vision Campaign represents a critical next step in implementing the goals and strategies that we kicked off with the NOW campaign. As we continue to grow, our pastors, senior staff leaders, and church council have continued to ask the question of what is NEXT for Thanksgiving after recently celebrating our 40-year anniversary. This campaign represents the start of that chapter.

Critical to Thanksgiving’s future growth and success will be recruiting and retaining gifted, committed, and faithful staff. Over the years we have found greater success in cultivating our own leaders through key programs (e.g. Leadership Academy, Journey Coaching, etc.), as they have a deeper understanding of our culture. The Thanksgiving Leadership Fund would direct a small portion of the funds raised toward future professional development opportunities for current staff, along with the reserves necessary to properly compensate current staff and attract top talent when needed to fill new roles.

A three-year campaign beginning May 2025 and ending May 2028.

Our mission at Thanksgiving has long been to reach out and gather people into the family of God. Our NOW campaign was designed to take the first critical steps in creating a community center that provided a significant space for connection between Thanksgiving and the community around us. The NEXT campaign allows us to both finish that space AND enter into this new season debt-free. Additionally, we have a passion for educating children and caring for families. Through the years Thanksgiving has shown this passion through a school and preschool. When the preschool closed in 2022, we made a pledge to not lose this passion. We know that Christ-centered childcare is greatly needed in our community. Therefore we feel that God is calling us, within this campaign, to provide seed money to develop a strategic plan for envisioning a second site that would provide a worship space on the weekend and a daycare/preschool during the week.

From the beginning, the NOW campaign was designed to be the start to a greater vision. The original goal of the NOW campaign was $2.5 million and was designed to fund about 40% of the overall project. The original cost for the full project was just over $7 million. Thanksgiving continues to be a generous people, and the funds raised from the NOW campaign accounted for a decisive portion of the campus updates, but they do not include the full scope. The NEXT campaign has a goal of raising $6 million to accomplish its three goals of moving closer to paying off the remaining debt, providing seed money to explore a second site, and extending resources of the Thanksgiving Leadership Fund.

As part of the NOW campaign, the congregation authorized the incursion of no more than $6 million in debt to complete the campus updates. The timing of this loan in a post-COVID/high inflationary environment meant that interest rates were higher than originally expected. Thanksgiving Church’s generosity during the NOW campaign has ensured that we are comfortably able to make the mortgage payments on that debt without impacting our operational budget, but to be true stewards of the resources entrusted to us and minimize long-term interest payments, a portion of the NEXT campaign funds will go towards paying off the original debt incurred through the NOW campaign.

As we have walked through this season with our Thanksgiving family, one comment we have heard over and over again is the need to repair and remodel our south campus office space and junior and senior high spaces (formerly the preschool areas). Church leadership has continued to try to be excellent stewards of Thanksgiving’s resources by limiting repairs to necessities, but the years of delayed upgrades are being felt. Funds from the NEXT campaign will be designated towards repair and upgrade of the south campus spaces, but only in conjunction with the current construction to ensure we maintain the ability to offer a gathering space for our junior and senior high students along with multiple Thanksgiving classes.