One Faith, One Hope, One Love is about the future of the Catholic community in southwestern Ohio. Bev and Charlie Barnes, the campaign’s co-chairs at St. Bernadette parish in Amelia, know where they’ll be as that future unfolds.

Somewhere else.

Charlie works as a manager at Toyota’s North American engineering and manufacturing headquarters in Erlanger, Kentucky, where the offices are scheduled to close as part of the automaker’s national consolidation.

For Charlie, that means a transfer to Plano, Texas.

The couple nevertheless volunteered for One Faith, One Hope, One Love though they knew they won’t be here to see its full fruition.

“This parish is our home even though we’re moving away,” Charlie said.

“We feel blessed to be part of it and part of the archdiocese. This is our chance to pay back some of that. Even if we’re not here, the parish and archdiocese will be in better shape.”

Bev added that their two children, ages 21 and 16, were able to attend Catholic schools from kindergarten on.

“We feel like we were in a privileged situation,” she said. Half the campaign funds will go to Catholic education.

Charlie modestly suggests that One Faith, One Hope, One Love would have succeeded in the parish even if he and Bev already had left town.

“All we needed to do was stay out of the way,” he said. “We have a great group at St. Bernadette.”

Still, he admits to having had initial doubts about whether the parish, with fewer than 800 members, could meet its campaign goal. “We saw the target and thought for a small parish that there was no way,” he recalls.

That was then. By mid-May the parish’s generosity amounted to nearly 150% of its goal, and still rising.

St. Bernadette’s pastor, Father William Stockelman, was more than delighted at the response.

In a letter to campaign supporters, he wrote: “I am speechless at your overwhelming response to One Faith, One Hope, One Love.”

The outpouring, he said, “seems simply a miracle.”

According to Charlie, the pastor deserves a lot of credit for the miracle. “I can’t say enough about Father Bill,” Charlie said. “He’s the heart and soul of the parish and leads by example.”

But, like Charlie and Bev, Father Stockelman also has plans to leave. He’s scheduled to retire in June 2017.  One Faith, One Hope, One Love not only will help to care for retired priests, but also will ease St. Bernadette’s transition to no longer having a full-time pastor.

“We’ll share a priest with St. Thomas More,” Bev said. Part of the parish rebate from One Faith, One Hope, One Love, she said, will be used “to secure a lay person, for visiting the homebound, general stuff that doesn’t require an ordained priest, and also to increase adult and youth faith formation.”

Though she’ll personally be leaving the parish, she believes “the whole point of this campaign is outreach, looking at this as Catholic community.”

For Bev, the nature of the cause removes the normal awkwardness of asking people for money.

“The thing I would say to volunteers who are nervous about this is that our responsibility is to educate and inform,” Bev said. “It’s up to the will of God and the prayer and decision of the parishioners.”

“This is a capital campaign that’s not so much about buildings but about human capital.”