Thanks for tuning into the blog today. I promised at Saturday’s Rounds
Ranch event and on Sunday morning in worship that I would send along
some more details about the shuffle of staff responsibilities, and here
they are along with a few other notes. Enjoy! And have a great week.
By the way, it was indeed a great time together on Saturday as we had
fun as a family at Rounds Ranch and on Sunday as we gathered for
worship. It was good to be back teaching the Word after my extended
summer preaching break. Thanks for your prayers and encouragement.
Amazing days ahead!
Our staff team shuffle.
We have, at Harvest, an incredibly gifted and passionate staff team.
I’m privileged to work with them. They bless our church and glorify our
God by the conduct of their lives and their service to us and to the
Lord.
(L-R) Amber, Kristin, Sheila, Mike, Todd, Roger, Joyce, Amy
As
we head into this new ministry year with a church that is a bit leaner
in attendance and offerings, we’ve shifted some roles around to
responsibly steward the financial resources we have, address our
essential values, and keep this ministry strong and moving forward for
Christ. My responsibilities as
senior pastor
remain largely unchanged. I will continue to lead this ministry, train
other leaders, work as an elder, oversee the staff team and carry on
the role of teaching pastor. One of my added responsibilities over the
next few months will be to oversee the worship and prayer ministries
until we fill that role, as well as searching for the right guy to fill
that role!
We have shifted
Roger Freeman’s responsibilities from his previous role of congregational care pastor to
small groups pastor.
He’ll also be overseeing men’s and women’s ministries (which are
largely about small groups too), as well as overseeing our refreshed and
updated assimilation ministry.
In
order to do that part of the job well, we knew we needed a solid
administrative person in the role and we knew it needed to be a staff
responsibility. What made sense to us was to shift
Amy Fotherby’s
responsibilities to this new role. Amy has served with great
distinction in our children’s ministry since 2003 and will now be taking
on the new role of
assimilation director. The
assimilation role moves people from first-time guest to a serving member
of Harvest. It is a big responsibility and one that Amy is eager to
fulfill.
Of course, that means that Amy is no longer overseeing children’s
ministry. That required a couple of other shifts. First, we’ve given
oversight of children’s ministry to the new
family ministries director, Mike Armstrong.
This is an expansion of his role as student ministries director. Mike
now oversees everything from nursery to young adults. His direct
leadership continues to go into our junior and senior high groups. Mike
has proven his leadership among us and is ready to take on the added
responsibilities.Chief
among those added responsibilities is having a part-time staff person
report to him. In order to adequately run our Sunday morning Higher
Ground children’s ministry, we knew we needed a part-time staff person.
The reduction in Amy’s full-time children’s ministry duties and what we
are doing now can be explained as: (a) no staff time now goes into our
Awana ministry. It must run completely on volunteer leadership; (b) our
2011 summer day camp is on the shelf for now; and (c) Mike will take on
some of the children’s ministry weight and responsibility.
And so, we hired
Jeannie Coros as our new part-time
Higher Ground director.
Jeannie has been a proven servant of Christ here at Harvest and is
well-known already in our children’s ministries. She’s excited about
being part of the staff team and has eagerly embraced her new role. And
we’re excited and blessed to have her!
The rest of our staff team roles remain pretty much the same:
Joyce Martin is our
administration and communications director and has been on the staff since the fall of 2001 shortly after our launch.
Sheila Burgess is her right-hand-man, so to speak, as the
communications assistant.
Kristin Vanderboor is our
finance and human resources assistant.
She keeps the books and pushes paper on behalf of the staff in the area
of policy and procedures, benefits and such. She’s been at it since
2002. And finally, we have
Amber Steingard who has three primary responsibilities and the longest title:
receptionist,
keeper of the database and
worship ministry administrative assistant.
And
having mentioned Amber’s role as worship assistant, I am actively
searching for the next worship director/pastor for Harvest. As I
mentioned on Saturday, on Wednesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. I will be
speaking with a young man about the spot on our staff team. He is a
gifted and passionate Christ-follower who is currently a member at
another Harvest Bible Chapel. Would you pray for that conversation?
Maybe even set a reminder alarm in your iPhone or Blackberry to pray
right when I’m talking to him. Maybe God would move in his heart to
draw him to Barrie!
And
would you also pray right now a quick prayer of thanksgiving for all of
these gifted servants of Christ who serve as part of our staff team? If
you have any questions about any of the changes, any of us would be
pleased to answer.
Communication: You’re reading
the blog
right now and that’s tremendous! This is one of the primary ways we
communicate with you on a weekly basis. In fact, you’ll find three or
four blog posts here every week. Please feel free to interact with the
blog posts by adding a comment along the way. We have also re-introduced
the Sunday print bulletin as well as continuing to offer it as an
e-bulletin that will be delivered to your inbox on Fridays. There are a number of other
e-newsletters for specific ministries all of which can be delivered right to your inbox. We have an extensive
website that very soon will be undergoing a complete overhaul. Watch for that. There is a
Facebook group and we are on
Twitter. Once in a while we go retro and send out
letters
on paper and put it in an envelope with a stamp on it. Someone takes it
from us and actually carries it to your mailbox. Cool, eh?! There is
really never an excuse for not knowing what is going on in our church
family. The onus is on you to access the information that our staff team
is diligent to put out there.
Family Chat:
Another way we communicate is through regular family chats on Sunday
mornings following the worship time. These will last no more than 8-10
minutes and are meant as updates to you from the elders and staff. The
elders have scheduled a family chat for this Sunday, September 19. If
you would like to interact with any of the information presented, send
us a note or arrange a time to meet with an elder, pastor or director.
New Preaching Series: Beginning next Sunday, September 19 we start a new series in
1 Thessalonians.
It won’t take you more than a few minutes to read through this letter
and prepare for the teaching next Sunday. The series is called, “The
People We Proved to Be” and will take us almost to Christmas. You’ll
find that this is an extremely encouraging letter from Paul to his
friends in the Macedonian city of Thessalonica. We’re going to find
plenty of challenge here…challenge wrapped in words of great comfort and
care. Watch for more about this series later this week in the blog.
Builders’ Meeting and Concert of Prayer: On Sunday, September 26 at 6 p.m. the
elders will be hosting a Builders’ Meeting for all those who are in
leadership roles in our Harvest family. If you are a small group
leader, ministry leader, class coordinator or the like, you will be
receiving an invitation by snail mail about this. Following this
meeting, we’ll be gathering at 7 p.m. for our first
Concert of Prayer for the new year. These are always amazing times
together as we press in to know the Lord. Mark this date and these
events on your calendar.
That’s it. That’s a lot! Thanks for making it to the end and for being a part of what God is doing here at Harvest. “
May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another, and for all, as we do for you” 1 Thessalonians 3:12.
Todd