Interim Update for January 17, 2020

Kristen back after a few days off

Kristen has been under the weather this week, and was unable to come in on Tuesday and Wednesday. She returned on Thursday, and obviously has some catching up to do. I worked on the Sunday bulletin -- whew, it's not easy! Hope you get back to 100% soon Kristen!

Tricycles roll at St. John's

For the past fifteen years, St. John's has participated in the St. Jude's Trike-A-Thon, a fun, service learning program for daycares and preschools that teaches trike and riding toy safety while helping the children of St. Jude's Children's Hospital. Preschool staff (and family helpers) lay out the Trike-A-Thon course in the hall ways and several of the preschool rooms. Staff and parent volunteers help guide preschoolers through the course on the preschool trikes. The event also generates funds and awareness for St. Jude's Children's Hospital, as preschool families pledge monetary gifts so that families with a child who is a patient at St. Jude's never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. This year's event at St. John's generated gifts totaling $4,438. That's amazing!

AC install update

The work of installing AC in the sanctuary continues. It's a big job, and I'm not sure how much longer it will take, but the first few units have been installed. There will will be 8 units in the main part of the sanctuary, one in the balcony, and one in the narthex.

Visits

On Tuesday I visited Sam D. The first Christmas without Bev was hard, but he's getting along. With Faith across the street and the other daughters also in town, they are able to visit and help him along. On Thursday, on the way back from Findlay, I stopped to visit Cleora. She's doing well, although still very much misses her own home.

Pulpit Supply Search for February 8-9 Continues

Pulpit supply will be needed for the weekend of February 8-9, as I will be flying to Colorado on Sunday morning for my continuing education event. I have contacted some pastors who live in the area, as well as Pr. Jim Dumke, our connection to Genacross (formerly Lutheran Homes Society). He would like to come sometime to speak about the ministry at Genacross. He says he's never been to St. John's before, but, like others I've called, is unavailable that weekend. Might we possibly do this in house if we can't find an ordained person close?

Eastern Conference Pastors

St. John's hosted the quarterly meeting of the Eastern Conference Pastors on Tuesday morning. The main event for that meeting was provided by Pastor Scott (remember him?), who explained the process the the LIFT congregations have been engaged in recently in packing nutritional grain based meals through an organization called Alliance for Better Nutrition. The LIFT congregations have set an ambitious goal of packing 250,000 meals during the coming year. Perhaps this is something we could do as a Fifth Sunday Service Project. You can read more about this amazing ministry at LIFT here.

Interim Pastors

This was a week of pastor meetings, as the (mostly) monthly meeting of the Synod Interim Pastors was Thursday at Synod Office. We were down in numbers (6) for this meeting, but the number of congregations in the synod currently in transition continues to remain high at 30.

Installation at Faith Lutheran

One of our Eastern Conference congregations no longer in the call process is Faith in Fremont, who, on Thursday evening, installed their newly called pastor, Tim Miller. Continuing in the call process are Zion Gibsonburg and Trinity (Venice) Sandusky.

End of the Year Reporting

There are two end of the year reports that need to be completed -- my annual Report of Rostered Ministry (only I can do that) by March 31, and the Congregational Parochial report, which Kristen, Shaun and I will all need to collaborate on. That's due February 28.

Church Picture Directory

I haven't spent too much time recently on our new Church Picture Directory. The picture part is pretty much done, with a bit of work yet to do to create/collect photos of church staff, maybe one for Council?? The biggest part is reviewing and editing the membership list. Will need some help on this, and hopefully we can have some volunteers to meet and decide which names should appear in the directory.

Newsletter -- Online and Hardcopy

I'm still doing some experimenting with the email version of the newsletter. I was hoping to put a link to an online church calendar, but have realized that many email clients don't support that kind of feature. Learning a little bit each time I work on this, so hope we can have a better email newsletter experience than we did in January. Hardcopy of the newsletter are available in the lobbies and can be picked up there.