Lord of Grace Family and Friends
Where are we at with the transition efforts?
Church Survey is still live – As I write this, we have 54 responses to the survey. We really need 70-80 to get a solid read on the congregation, so if you haven’t completed it, please do. If you have, thank you! The sooner we complete this step, the sooner we can complete the transition.
Who should take the survey? Any friend, staff, or member of Lord of Grace who is over 14. Each person should take the survey, not the household. In my house, it’s Denise, Jimmy and I, so we should complete 3 surveys
Where are the survey’s? The survey is online, and can be accessed by going to https://tinyurl.com/LOGTsurvey
If this is a problem for you, we will have paper copies of the survey in the office to be completed. Please note, any paper surveys, will have to be manually entered online, so if you can do it online, that will save us some work.
Transition Report – We will be summarizing the data in the survey and the cottage meetings to determine the top themes about who we are, what’s going well, where we struggle, where we want to be, and what we are most looking for in a pastor. This information will be used to create a Transition Report to the Council, and once approved, to the congregation. In addition, we will be including information about Church finances, time and talent, strategic vision, church and Marana demographics. Assuming we get enough survey responses in November, this could be completed by end of December.
Updating Policies, Procedures, and Job Descriptions – as part of completing the transition, we need to update our policies, procedures and job descriptions. I want to thank Rod Boorse, Carol Buuck, Candy Borstad, Carolyn Bernheim, Erica Yngve, Cindy Stein, Sam Lyth and Joy Folkvord for stepping up to help us complete this work. Hopefully we can complete these updates by the end of December as well
Ministry Site Profile – The approved transition report will be used to generate a Ministry Site Profile (MSP). This is the final step in the transition process. The MSP is submitted to the Synod and is used by the Synod to post our position for potential pastoral candidates. It is similar to the transition report and tells the story of who we have been, who are now, and who we want to be. Once this is submitted to Synod, the work of the transition is complete, and the process of calling a new pastor begins
1st Call to evaluate – Once the MSP is complete, if Pastor Randy is feeling called to apply to the position, he will be our first candidate to evaluate. Fortunately, we have a lot more feedback with Pastor Randy than we would get for most pastoral candidates, so it should make the process of evaluating him much faster and easier. To help pave the way for this, ensure you are providing feedback to the church leaders on how you have been impacted by Pastor Randy, both positively and negatively. Church leaders include Council members, Committee/Ministry Leaders, or members of the transition team (myself, Cindy Stein, Laura Tanem-Hernandez, Sam Lyth, Sue Justis, Joy Folkvord, or Richard Green)
Thanks for your continued prayer and support –
William Willcoxson
wwillcoxson@comcast.net