Living Out Our Mission
Stewardship 2026
This year, our stewardship campaign focuses on the mission statement for University Presbyterian Church:
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We are a family of faith, serving God with open minds,
loving hearts and willing hands.
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While we have done much in 2025 to live out those goals – developing lively programs for all ages, creating opportunities to serve the community and deepening our commitment to Christ through Bible study and small group activities – we feel that we can take this farther in 2026. In particular:
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Providing additional programs, especially for children and young adults, two groups that have grown substantially in the past two years.
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Continuing to upgrade our building and grounds. In the last couple of years we have added a generator for the manse (much needed), repaved our parking lot and installed new lighting. We continue to develop large-scale projects like these, and so are looking to bump our building and grounds budget by 4% to help.
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Offering our hourly staff enhanced benefits, such as healthcare and pension access. Doing so will reward our staff for their commitment while also ensuring we live out our mission statement inside the church, as well as in the larger community.
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We anticipate a slight 3% increase to our hourly staffing costs as a result of these changes.
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Based on those updates, we have targeted the 2026 budget as follows:
To accomplish that, we hope to boost pledged giving from $481,562 in 2025 to $500,823 in 2026. A reminder that pledges typically make up 87.5% of our total budget. We also receive income from building rentals – including Somerset School – and other smaller sources, such as paper recycling and non-pledge giving.
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For more information about the 2026 budget or the stewardship campaign, please reach out to the elders on the Finance Committee: Doug Fryer, chair, and Dan Grantham, elder.