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Rogue River church will raise money for its own sanctuary By BUFFY POLLOCK for The Mail Tribune ROGUE RIVER - After 32 years of sharing facilities with Hope Presbyterian Church, members of Our Lady of the River Catholic Community Church decided it was time they had their own sanctuary. They hired Guidance in Giving of Seattle to launch a $400,000 fund-raiser titled "Building a House for Jesus and Mary." The fund-raiser will jump-start a long-term project to raise more than $1 million necessary to build a chapel/community hall, confessional, kitchen, offices and library. The Rev. Gregory Moys, pastor of St. Anne's Catholic Church in Grants Pass (mother church of the Rogue River mission), said the fund-raiser would not enable a groundbreaking yet but would get the ball rolling - something that has been dropped several times over three decades. A building has been needed since Our Lady of the River started in 1969, but assistant priests assigned the task of fund-raising were transferred too frequently to see anything through, Moys said. A special collection taken via church-shaped boxes yielded enough to purchase a 21/2-acre site on Foothill Boulevard two years ago and contributed $100,000 to the project. "It is, to a certain extent, hard to form a church community without our own building," Moys said. "There's been a great relationship between the churches, but the Catholic community is a lot larger, and once we're able to identify with our own buildings we feel we'll have more of an identity." A feasibility study performed by Guidance in Giving polled 10 to 15 percent of parishioners and estimated $350,000 to $400,000 could be raised. Moys said the study estimated an average donation of $4,000 from each parishioner. The church serves parishioners in Rogue River, Wimer and Gold Hill. For more information, contact Moys at 1-541-476-2240. Buffy Pollock is a free-lance writer living in Medford. E-mail her at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.