9/20/23: Commendation

On Sunday, I took a few moments to COMMEND the Stewardship Committee (Greg Jahnke, Chair, Marsha King-Rosine, Kay Sandberg, and Paul Smith) for their excellence in crafting a Stewardship campaign for this year, requiring 21% growth over last year, with the additional loss of $10,800 from 4 dear congregants who passed. And really this is a Commendation to all of you who pledged for the year—WE DID IT—99% of it! We can fully fund our budget for this fiscal year. For those who pledged the prior year, the aggregate pledge gain was 21% and made up most of the gap. The additional 24 new pledges made up for the 10 lost pledges with another $4k. Really, this is all very huge. And while the Stewardship Committee did a fantastic job of encouraging and asking, YOU stepped up and filled our sails with the wind we need to move forward into Search. Congratulations ALL! And if you haven’t pledged, we still have room for more.

At our last council meeting, we also met with our Conference Minister, Rev. Tyler Connoley, who laid out the process for doing a search for a settled pastor. We as Council will now work together to form a Search Team of 7 people, with a goal of having trusted, committed folks who are a representative blend of our congregation. The plan is for this group to meet with Rev. Connoley when he is here Saturday, October 28^th. Rev. Connoley will then commission our Search Team, launching them on their way on Sunday, October 29^th.

Council also approved both Tege Phillips and Cathy Barker as our delegates to the CCP Annual Conference in Salem—and also our youth member, Max Barker. We will pay their registration fees of $100 each.

And we established a new date for Karen’s Communication workshop with us. Due to the total solar eclipse that occurs October 14^th in the morning and interest in a number of people to watch it, we have moved this important workshop, “Creating new Opportunities,” to Saturday, October 21^st. It will be in our Social Hall, using the new TV for presentations. We will meet 8:30 am (for morning snacks) to 1 pm, with the meeting beginning at 9 am. This is for ALL of the church and all leaders are asked to be there.