The Emerging Unified Church of Carlisle
Overview of Transition Team Meeting
October 23, 2012
On Tuesday, October 23, 2012, the
Transition Team met for the tenth time. Certainly
by now you must know that Pastor Jim has a great sense of humor. At the conclusion of our meeting he reflected
back to the first meeting we had in April.
He was still serving his previous charge, and Pastor Bruce led the
meeting. The pastoral changes had already
delayed the operational start of the Transition Team, and many of us felt that
we were extremely far behind in our work to unify our churches. All of us could see this huge mountain of
work for us to accomplish with too little time to get it all done. Pastor Jim said, “I left that night thinking
that when I got home I would be saying to Amy, ‘Honey, we won’t be there
long.’” We’ve come a long way since starting
to climb that mountain on April 17!
The Transition Team received a very
detailed and comprehensive recommendation from the CONNECT Focus Group. As will be the procedure with each of the
fourteen Focus Group’s recommendations, the Transition Team heard the details
and made a few suggestions. The Focus
Group will discuss these suggestions and then deliver a final recommendation to
us at our next meeting on November 8. If
accepted by the Transition Team, the governing body of the new church will
receive this recommendation and thirteen additional recommendations and apply
them appropriately as we move forward. The CONNECT recommendation encompasses
existing and new ministries offering pastoral care in cases of death,
hospitalization or hospice/terminal care; connecting with limited activity
members confined to rehabilitation facilities, their homes or nursing homes and
connecting through relational bridges to each other such as prayer teams, small
groups, those in crisis and fellowship activities..
At our next meeting, the Transition Team
is scheduled to receive recommendations from the following Focus Groups: Child
Care, Administrative Structure and part one of two parts from
Communications. The ballot listing all
of the suggested names for the new church should be available at that time,
too. The Legal Issues Focus Group has
been collecting and starting to review all of the legal documents existing at
our three churches. At some point, every
physical asset will be identified and inventoried at the three structures.
At this point, we are rapidly moving
forward. Please, continue to pray for
our work. Please, if asked to serve in
some capacity say, “Yes.” If you don’t
understand something that we are doing, please ask any one of us for an
explanation. Reminder: Open Congregation
Meetings on Sunday, October 28, at 4 pm at Otterbein U.M.C. and Sunday, November
18, at 5 pm at Allison.
Transition Team
Pastoral Team Allison First Grace
Jim
VanZandt, Chair Ron Axsom Dennis Downey, Co-chair Colleen Kulp
Mira
Hewlett Ann
Cook Tracy Horgan Kerm Leitner, Sec.
Susan
Stewart Jeff Harpel Debbie Washinger Randy Noaker
Joanne Reynolds Lois
Weibley Dianne Otto
Dennis Keller,
District Superintendent
Our next
scheduled meeting is Thursday, November 8, at 6:30 pm in the Allison Library.
No comments:
Post a Comment