United Church of Warsaw

At the end of May, I will have been with you for 16 months! I am excited about your future as a congregation. You have done good work together and experienced important healing during this time, laying a good foundation for welcoming a new minister. Here is some of what I see happening:

• You have turned around your financial situation so that you entered this year without any debt and with a healthy balance in the general fund and strong reserve funds.
• The Praise Chorus has grown to about 15 members, and more and more people are using their gifts in music to enhance our worship services.
• The committees, as well as the boards, are all meeting and involved in various projects to move forward the church’s ministry.
• We completed a new Vision Plan for the church, and the Session is working on specific goals from that to focus on during the next year.
• And the Search Committee is hard at work, anticipating receiving candidate profiles by late spring or early summer.

A couple of years between installed ministers is quite common, and this interim period gives the congregation time to do this healing and envisioning work to prepare for continuing ministry with a new pastor. So we’ll keep moving forward together.

Where is the pastor?

Some of you may be wondering that soon, so let me tell you what’s coming up. Several conferences and continuing education events are coming up very close together, and I want to take advantage of the opportunity. So I’ll be taking a combination of vacation and continuing education time to attend these events:

Spiritual Directors International Conference (Los Angeles), April 20-26: Joy and I will also celebrate my Dad’s 80th birthday while we’re there, as well as take a couple of days to relax.

Values Realization Institute Conference (Candandaigua), May 5-7: This one is close by, but we’ve both been asked to present workshops which were scheduled for Sunday. I’m presenting a workshop called Core Values in a Polarized World, which I’m also presenting for the Presbytery of Genesee Valley at a Resource Saturday on May 13.

Spiritual Activism Conference (Washington D.C.), May 16-19: I have recently joined the Network for Spiritual Progressives (proposed by Michael Lerner in his recent book, The Left Hand of God), and I will meet many of those people at this important event. And I’ll be staying with Joy’s brother who lives in D.C.
New England Labyrinth Festival (Boston), June 2-3: Joy is a workshop presenter at this 2-day event. It will be a fast road trip for us, and I’ll be back for Sunday.

Peace Camp (Atlanta), July 10-15: This national conference is sponsored by the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, of which we are members. Joy is leading compline each evening with the whole group, and we are both presenting workshops that week.

I’ll only be gone 2 Sundays with all of that traveling, and I’ll be in Warsaw for most of the important events and meetings of the congregation during this time. Thank you for your prayers for our safe journeys and for the other work I am doing.

PASTOR’S FINANCIAL SUMMARY
The Celebration
Each year the Headstart program gives us their annual lease payment in January, so we have a very healthy balance in the general fund. That reserve, of course, goes down as the year progresses. But we are off to a good start through the end of March, with our expenses under budget and our contributions and other income fairly close to budget.
The Challenge
Two areas of financial focus for the congregation this year are: (1) Maintain a generous level of giving to the church to keep the budget balanced all the way through the year; and (2) Respond generously to special appeals for mission offerings and for church projects throughout the year. [Some of those projects are listed in this newsletter.] – Thank you for your generous giving.

Jeff and Linda Thomas, Coordinators

Two of our newest members have agreed to coordinate new congregational ministry in our community. In our Vision Plan, one of our strategies is stated this way:
Develop ongoing ministry to area families in need, including both emergency assistance and providing help for people to improve their lives, such as training in life skills.
Jeff and Linda invite you to contact them directly to tell them you are interested and to find out how you can help. They are open for your ideas about some of the ways we might accomplish this. Please talk to them on Sunday, or give them a call at 786-5735.

Several people, and the youth group, have expressed interest in