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May ePonderings
from Pastor Paul

The day after Easter I began part 2 of my 4-part sabbatical for the year.  Sabbaticals are provided for our Pastors for every 5 years of ministry.  I have been serving in ministry with you for 10 ½ years, and I feel so blessed to continue this incredible journey with you.  This past month I took 3 weeks off to “step back” and breathe.  This was a wonderful 3 weeks that I greatly needed to recharge my spiritual batteries.   Thank you for supporting your Pastors with sabbatical opportunities and your love and support we experience so beautifully each and every day.  

This year, in lieu of taking my sabbatical in one 3-month block, I have broken this time into 4 shorter blocks of time.  Each block will have a different focus – a combination of reading, relaxing, refreshing, and refocusing.   And each block is most importantly filled with prayerful reflection, seeking God’s guidance with our call to ministry in this community.  As the prayerful direction is created, I set aside intentional time to process information and begin the development and implementation of a cohesive, integrated ministry structure for Peace United Church of Christ.  This process will entail culminating all areas of our existing
ministry, and weave new initiatives and ideas into a comprehensive plan.

As a result, beginning this month, we will further initiate this process by developing an “Implementation Team” who will assess all of the information that was obtained during our Visioning Process and other ministry ideas/initiatives that have been lifted up, to create a plan to integrate all of the ministry items we do (and plan to do).  This Team will also be developing an operations plan to ensure that our facilities and resources are adequate to manage our current and future ministry needs.  Their work will also entail coordinating our needed facility upgrades/improvements to keep our current facility, allowing for our infrastructure to be properly maintained and operational.  This work is very complex and will take time to assimilate all that needs to be done.   It will also involve a lot of input and assistance from many in the congregation, so I would encourage you to prayerfully consider engaging in this process if asked to do so. 

We are so blessed to be a part of a growing, thriving community of faith.  At the core of all we do and all we are, we continue to experience Christ’s love in amazing and powerful ways.  I celebrate and give thanks for the constant working of the Spirit, calling us forth to realize that God is making all things new!  Keep praying – Keep hoping – Keep dreaming – Keep loving! 

Blessings and Peace,

Pastor Paul