My First Council Meeting
I now have my first St. John's Council Meeting under my belt. Many thanks to all of you who give of your time, talents and treasure to serve our Lord through the ministry at St. John's. The breadth and depth of your involvement are impressive and commendable. I look forward to my continued work with you during these months of interim. When we were writing thank you notes at the end of the last night's meeting, someone should have written one for each of you. So let this sentence by my thank you to you. I want to give a special shout-out and thanks to Heather for everything she has been doing with regard to VBS and the approaching Sunday School year, and to Sean for his many hours of time and diligence in keeping the financial records and preparing the reports for all of us. Your hard work and dedication have not gone unnoticed! And, Sean -- best wishes as you begin a new chapter in your coming vocation as an electrical student and electrician!
Breeze export/import
I mentioned in last week's update that we have subscribed to a new system to replace Revelations, the program that has been in place for a number of years. The move was made because it is no longer being supported. The new system is called Breeze, and on Wednesday afternoon, one of their technicians connected remotely with Terri's computer, and exported all the data in the program. The only data that the technician was unable to export was Attendance. We can use the old system to check that, and start out new entering attendance in the new program. It takes some time for Breeze to organize and load it into their program, but it should be completed in the next few days, at which time I'll be able to view everything (except contributions) on my computer. One thing that will need to be done is to define and assign people in the database to a status -- active member, active attender, inactive member, inactive attender, etc. I know that some people's status has changed in the past year, but hopefully we can get things up to do date. If anyone would like to help with this process, let me or Terri know.
Three Strategies for Recruiting More Volunteers
All the people who work at Breeze are active in their own congregations which also use Breeze, so there's lots of hands on experience that has formed this Church Management System. They also have a blog that speaks to issues that face all congregations. The latest blog entry proposes some strategies for recruiting more volunteers. More of those need around St. John's? I'm guessing yes. You can read more here.
Website updated by Andrew
In last week's update I mentioned the congregation's website, which he manages. He emailed me this week to let me know that he had spent some hours updating and improving the site. I had indicated to him that the site was not displaying properly on my smartphone. This is important, as most people moving into the area have and use smartphones to begin their search for needed services. We hope that one of the services they will avail themselves of is Saturday at 5 and Sunday at 10. He said he could do the online calendar, but we will wait as Breeze utilizes an online calendar that we should be able to display on our website.
Confirmation Ministry at St. John's
The Education Team, in their report last night, spoke of the Confirmation Program, including a few changes that we would like to implement for the coming academic season, including some different expectations regarding the faith paper that confirmation candidates write. We are suggesting an evaluation of Confirmation at St. John's for possible new directions that we'd like to take this ministry. I have shared with Team members several documents for their review, including the ELCA 1993 Confirmation Ministry Task Force (25 years ago!) which is the most recent statement and document from the ELCA that outlines best thinking and practice for how we understand and implement confirmation ministry in our congregations. I'd like to share this document also with you -- it's about 14 pages, but lots of good, helpful content which can give us direction as we evaluate this ministry. Your can read the document here. Note: you can simply view and read the document in the Dropbox window in which it will be displayed, or you can download the pdf and even print it out if you wish.
Remember William Meyer?
Does anyone remember William Meyer? He was the editor at the Bellevue Post Gazette from 1977-1981. He later went to seminary and became a pastor in the The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He was my breakfast partner one morning at the Interim Ministry Network Annual Conference that I attended in June in St. Louis. He remembers fondly his years in Bellevue.
Interim Ministry Plan
At council Thursday night I presented a hard copy of my August newsletter Pastor's message, which focused on an outline and description of my time and work with you as your interim pastor, along with a tentative schedule for the coming months. I said I would post a link to this document in this message, so I have linked it here.
Northwestern Ohio Synod eNews for July
Your can read the latest Synod news and announcements here.
Vacation dates
Just a reminder that I have requested vacation days for August 7, 8 and 9. As mentioned at Council, I will be traveling with daughter Sarah in her car, helping her move from Ohio to Logan, Utah, where she will begin a PhD program in mathematical ecology. Will depart with Sarah early on Monday the 6th, take three days for travel, and fly back to Cleveland on Thursday from of Salt Lake City.
URL for blog
I used to do these updates just with an email message, but then decided that it would work better to put them into a blog. That makes them readily accessible if you need to look back at some information that was shared here. I will provide the link to the current blog in an email, but keep in mind that you can access the entire blog with the url stjohnsbellevue.blogger.com. Links to the blog archives are in the right column organized by year and month.
VBS almost ready to go
Kudos and thanks to everyone who is working hard to make VBS a success again this year. A forest has popped up in the sanctuary, and if it hasn't already, a river will soon be flowing. Sure to be a good week with the kids. The fun starts at 6:30 Sunday night, and continues every evening until Thursday.
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