From Pastor Mark

It has certainly been a blessing to begin my ministry with you as your interim pastor, and I have appreciated the warmness of your welcome! Grace is truly an amazing place, blessed with a facility of unrivaled beauty, a dedicated and gifted staff, vibrant ministries, and members who live their faith every day.

At the June Congregation Council meeting, I laid out a broad overview of the interim process. As the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland points out, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.” My task as your Intentional Interim pastor is to provide both the destination and a road. And your task, as congregation and leaders, is to be the engine, fueled by the Holy Spirit, to reach the destination of a new called pastor. Our task could be summarized this way:

The interim task is for the interim pastor and congregation to work together through any existing issues so as to remove or lower barriers to the congregation’s ministry, so that they can be as healthy as possible when they move into the next phase of their ministry and life together with their next settled pastor.

But that will take some time and work on all of our parts. Over the coming months the interim pastor will work with the Congregation Council to address these opportunities through the appointment and work of a Transition Team.

The Transition Team works with the interim pastor to plan and guide a process that helps prepare the congregation for a new future under the leadership of a new pastor, involving the congregation by addressing five Focus Points:

• Heritage: reviewing how the congregation has been shaped and formed
• Leadership: reviewing the membership needs and its ways of organizing and developing new and effective leadership
• Mission: defining and redefining sense of purpose and direction
• Connections: discovering all the relationships a faith community builds outside of itself
• Future: developing an honest assessment of the other focus points so that the congregation can turn its energy toward proactive decision making for the future. Reflecting upon these five Focus Points helps a congregation to answer the questions, “Who are we?”, “What is God calling us to do?” and “Who are our neighbors?”

What would the Transition Team do? Some possibilities:

• Personal interviews, cottage meetings, or surveys to get input from congregation
• Analysis of the needs in the neighborhood and community
• Work on the vision and purpose of the congregation.
• Complete the Ministry Site Profile, the multi page document that will describe Grace to potential pastoral candidates.

I hope it is clear that this process will take some time. From beginning to end, the process usually takes about a year, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. We already have some members who have agreed to serve on the Transition Team, and they, along with Council members, will attend a three-hour training workshop with me in July. Then the Transition Team will plan and implement the plan for the remainder of the interim process.

I look forward to working with you during the coming months, as we proclaim and live out in our daily lives the hope that we as disciples of Jesus Christ have, that we die daily to sin and rise to new life, and we live in expectation of life eternal with Christ.