Letter From Congregational President Laine Gen
December 16, 2021
Dear Elim family,
I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas from your Leadership Team, and I’d like to recognize our amazing staff for their perseverance during challenging times. Pastor Kathryn, Lauren, Richard, Barb, Erin, our substitute office manager Carol N., and our custodian Cindy H. have continued to roll with all the changes 2021 has brought our way. Volunteers Andy, Kevin and Paul, who make up our tech team, continue to produce our online services every week and make sure our in-person services have audio support. Please be sure to thank those three members of Elim, either with a card or a monetary gift (designated Christmas Thanks on your check memo or online in Tithely).
Please make a note that our hard-working office staff will be taking a well-deserved break after Christmas when our office is closed the week of December 27-31 and on Monday, January 3, in honor of the new year.
Further changes will be coming in early 2022, as Erin returns to work part-time from home. Our substitute office manager Carol has decided it’s time to go back to her other full time job (taking care of her mom and her grandbabies), so we wish her well. We will need volunteers who can answer phones 2 hours/day from Monday-Thursday while Erin works from home in January. Thank you for your patience with our reduced office hours, and if you have 2 hours/week to give at the office, please let us know.
It’s with great sadness that we announce that Barb has decided to retire in early 2022 from her incredibly important job as worship clerk. She has done such a wonderful job of organizing volunteers through the pandemic, creating our weekly bulletins, announcements and inserts, and just generally pitching in cheerfully to help with whatever needed to be done, especially to support the many memorial services we’ve hosted in the past 2 months. We are happy for Barb to spend more time with her family, but her Elim family sure will miss her in the office!
Finally, I would like to let you know that the Transition Team has finished hosting small group discussions. More than 74 people participated, either in person, on Zoom or by submitting answers online. The Team will now draft a Ministry Site Profile, a very long document that describes Elim, our hopes, our pastoral needs, and which will serve as our job description that gets shared with the Synod. We are putting together a Call Committee and will need to have a congregational vote on that Committee in late January or early February to move ahead. Regardless of whom we call, we must continue to honor the process that the Synod has set forth for churches who wish to call a permanent pastor. Thank you for your continued prayers for this process.
God’s peace to each one of you.
Kind regards,
Laine
Dear Elim family,
I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas from your Leadership Team, and I’d like to recognize our amazing staff for their perseverance during challenging times. Pastor Kathryn, Lauren, Richard, Barb, Erin, our substitute office manager Carol N., and our custodian Cindy H. have continued to roll with all the changes 2021 has brought our way. Volunteers Andy, Kevin and Paul, who make up our tech team, continue to produce our online services every week and make sure our in-person services have audio support. Please be sure to thank those three members of Elim, either with a card or a monetary gift (designated Christmas Thanks on your check memo or online in Tithely).
Please make a note that our hard-working office staff will be taking a well-deserved break after Christmas when our office is closed the week of December 27-31 and on Monday, January 3, in honor of the new year.
Further changes will be coming in early 2022, as Erin returns to work part-time from home. Our substitute office manager Carol has decided it’s time to go back to her other full time job (taking care of her mom and her grandbabies), so we wish her well. We will need volunteers who can answer phones 2 hours/day from Monday-Thursday while Erin works from home in January. Thank you for your patience with our reduced office hours, and if you have 2 hours/week to give at the office, please let us know.
It’s with great sadness that we announce that Barb has decided to retire in early 2022 from her incredibly important job as worship clerk. She has done such a wonderful job of organizing volunteers through the pandemic, creating our weekly bulletins, announcements and inserts, and just generally pitching in cheerfully to help with whatever needed to be done, especially to support the many memorial services we’ve hosted in the past 2 months. We are happy for Barb to spend more time with her family, but her Elim family sure will miss her in the office!
Finally, I would like to let you know that the Transition Team has finished hosting small group discussions. More than 74 people participated, either in person, on Zoom or by submitting answers online. The Team will now draft a Ministry Site Profile, a very long document that describes Elim, our hopes, our pastoral needs, and which will serve as our job description that gets shared with the Synod. We are putting together a Call Committee and will need to have a congregational vote on that Committee in late January or early February to move ahead. Regardless of whom we call, we must continue to honor the process that the Synod has set forth for churches who wish to call a permanent pastor. Thank you for your continued prayers for this process.
God’s peace to each one of you.
Kind regards,
Laine
