Vitality Day & Harvest Crossing update
Thank you all for your hard work, attention, and creative ideas as we met together last week for Annual Meeting. I want to cede most of my time this week to Harvest Crossing for an exciting update, but a quick plug here for the upcoming Vitality Day on March 7 at Williston Federated Church. Several UCUers attended last year’s vitality day, which centered children’s and youth ministry. I hope to attend with a small (or large!) group of interested church folks on March 7. Let me know if you’re interested; I’ve already signed us up! Here’s more about it:
Vitality Day is a seminar designed to help churches connect with and grow the community, explore funding opportunities, craft clearer visions, and develop a process to better disciple youth and adults in the church. It will be led by church consultant Paul Nickerson, who has worked with a number of churches throughout the Conference as well as churches throughout the country.
The cost is $100/church (lunch is included).
Additionally, the Hope Fund is offering a scholarship to the first 8 churches that sign up for a year of coaching with Paul as part of a cohort with other churches for $250.
Pastor Jen
Our Harvest Crossing initiative cleared one of our remaining major hurdles last week when the 30 day appeal period to the Underhill Development Review Board’s final project approval expired on January 21st. We spoke to the VT Environmental Court on the 22nd and they confirmed no appeals had been received. The effect of this milestone is that we are now approved to proceed with the construction of the affordable homes provided we remain in compliance with all of the other state permitting requirements.
There is still a lot of work to do before we put shovels in the ground and begin the real work. We need to finalize a sub-grantee agreement with the Town of Underhill for $500,000 of implementation funding from the VT Community Development Program. Once that agreement is in place, we will need to solicit bids for the road, utilities and other infrastructure work UCU will be responsible for. We need to work out the legal steps for us to actually transfer the ownership of the property to Green Mountain Habitat for Humanity so they can build the houses. These are just a few examples of the many remaining steps. The good news remains that we have moved beyond the planning phase of this effort to the implementation phase.
In the coming weeks and months you may begin to notice more people and equipment working on and around the Harvest Crossing property. This is all a visible sign of God’s blessings on our Church and the future neighbors who will live in this space.
