God’s Perfect Timing

God’s timing is perfect. He is rarely early, and never too late. I have news that I am so excited to share, but I need to take a couple of paragraphs to set it up.

The 2015-16 fiscal year will come to a close in a few days, on June 30th. This time last year, the Logos Academy Board of Directors approved a school budget of over $3M. This budget represented a bold step of faith and a significant investment in making key improvements to our school program.

We began this fiscal year with a confident expectation that we would secure about $1.5M through Pennsylvania’s tax credit programs. These critical programs allow businesses to allocate their taxes to fund scholarships for students with significant financial need.

Pennsylvania’s 270-plus day State budget impasse delivered a devastating blow to our projections. To date, we have received about 62% of the tax credits we had anticipated. This is problematic because scholarships are granted at the beginning of the year before those funds are collected. It became very clear near the end of 2015, that we would need to find another funding source to make up the roughly $800,000 loss we were now expecting.

The Logos Academy community immediately committed this matter to prayer and embarked on a publicity campaign to raise awareness of the harm being done to York County’s nonprofit agencies. Community partners and loyal donors quickly stepped into action. In late March of this year, our Advancement team launched a 100-day fundraising campaign called Step Into the Gap to raise $800,000. Historically, the Spring has not been our strongest fundraising season, so this campaign felt like a long shot.

Yet, as I sit writing this update, it is as if heaven’s floodgates have opened. God’s timing is perfect; rarely early, never too late. For some time, the Step Into the Gap campaign had been hovering at $300,000. Our community continued to pray, trusting that God would provide.

This week we received commitments nearing an additional $400,000 in multiple sources. This exciting news means that we are within striking distance of balancing this year’s budget!!!

God deserves the praise of one more glory story. In the middle of this budget year, a donor stepped forward and purchased and donated 243 West King Street, a parcel of land that is adjacent to a property we already own (255 West King Street). This $300,000 gift was critical to our long range plans to add additional school space in the future. Without this parcel of land, our future development efforts would have been at risk.

God sent this donor to us when we had no idea how our budget gap would be filled. Looking back, it was as if the Lord was giving us a simple sign that said, “No one controls the future of Logos Academy but me. I am in control of your present and your future.” Without reading too much into that donation, it felt like a downpayment on the future of our students at a time when we were struggling to believe. Our God is awesome!

Please accept my sincere thanks for all of your prayers and your generous donations in the 2015-16 academic year. We made significant strides academically, graduated our 2nd class of seniors, and are poised to have a very strong recruiting year. Our two kindergarten classes for next year are nearly full already!

God has always kept the Logos Academy community on its knees, lest we, in our pride, start to think that this work is done simply in human strength. There may have been moments when our faith wavered this year, but we learned once again that God’s timing is perfect. He is rarely early, and never late.

With abundant gratitude in Christ,
Rev. Aaron J. Anderson
CEO/Head of School