It Takes a Church

When Lisa Jo, our Director of Faith Development, left last June, we decided to hold off on replacing her position for several reasons. The first was because of the obvious difficulty of them doing their job in the midst of quarantines and shut-downs. The second was that it gave us time to rethink that position and create a new job description that would best fulfill what we need.

A new job description was approved by the one board last fall, and we are now preparing to begin advertising the position. We are advertising both locally and nationally in order to find the best candidates we can. We have a deadline of May 2 for applications, with the intention of interviewing in May and having a start in June or July, depending on where they are coming from. If you know any potential candidates, please have them be in touch with me.

But, one of the traps we can often fall into is that once we have someone on staff to think that because they are being paid that they then get to do everything. Nothing could be farther from the truth, especially when it comes to children and youth.

Those who study youth programs and youth engagement in the church say that for youth to truly feel welcomed and engaged in a congregation, that they need to have a relationship with at least five other adults in the church. That obviously does not include their parents, and it has to be more than just five adults who know their names. These need to be adults who know what’s going on in their lives, who are engaging them in conversation and to whom the youth might go if they needed help or advice.

There is the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and the same is true here: It takes a church to raise a child. If we want to have successful children, youth, young adult, family and other adult programs, it takes the work of all of us. The church is really the last truly intergenerational organization existing in the country, and that should be one of the church’s greatest strengths.

One of our goals we set last year was to create more opportunities to be in community and to build community. That quickly went away. But now, more than ever, hopefully we understand the need for community and to support one another and build one another up in the faith.

Our connections team is doing a great job of being creative as restrictions begin to loosen, and so we hope you will begin partaking of the different activities, as you feel safe, as we move forward. One of those will happen this Sunday after worship when we will be doing an interactive stations of the cross in the prayer garden.  This will take the place of the regular fellowship time, and will be socially distanced.

We will keep you up-to-date as we have more information on the hiring process, and we hope to see you either in-person or online for worship in the next few weeks for Lent and Easter remembering that we are the best we when do this faith thing together.