Thankful Update from the Grace Council - November 2020
We are thankful for the servant leadership of our entire staff! As always, our staff serves the congregation and community with grace, creativity, and continuing adaptability. There is familiarity and continuity in the life of Grace in these unusual times and there is persistent newness, facilitated by our wonderful staff. Thank you, for all you do!
We are grateful to the congregation for persistence, for patience, for flexibility, for creative engagement in old ways and new, for prayerful and thoughtful support. Thank you to all of you who offer music, Psalm readings, Sunday texts, prayers, sermons, reflections on gratitude, education opportunities, care contacts, business management, social times, strategic planning, and so much more!
Each month the council reviews the congregation’s pandemic practices and policies. Each month we speak of our eagerness to resume a more normal life for Grace, and each month we are amazed at the rich variety in the present ministry and life of the congregation and at Grace’s continuing support for ministry beyond the congregation.
The council believes that the pandemic policy principles we’ve been following since March are still the best course: concern for the well-being of the whole person, attention to the advice of medical experts and of church and government leaders, modeling care and caution, temporary suspension of physical gatherings for worship and other activities, temporary closing of our building, and trust in our pastors, director of faith formation, office manager, and music and other staff to make the necessary day to day, week to week decisions that adapt this approach to ever-changing realities.
We are grateful for Pastor Mary and Pastor Dan as they serve and lead so well, and we are grateful to those who will lead us through the coming pastoral transition. We on the council will oversee the whole process of transition but much of the detail work will be done by two smaller groups.
A Ministry Profile Team including Dan Olson, Lisa Linnell, and Drew Schwab as chair will take the lead in preparing the resources to help the synod staff help us. They are already at work.
A Call Committee has now been named by the council. Members will be: David Grandall, Luke Jerviss, Patty Lee, Barbara Lundblad, Brian Neurauter, Maren Olson, and Tony Pham. Kate Reuer Welton as Lutheran Campus Ministry pastor, and I as congregation president will be non-voting members of the committee. The committee will elect its own chair.
Pastor John Hulden and Bishop Ann Svennungsen from the ELCA Minneapolis Area Synod staff will advise these committees and the whole congregation.
We are grateful for your continuing financial support for Grace University congregation and for our ministry partners. Both expenses and income for these months have been less than budgeted. We expect to finish the year in the black because you have been consistently generous and because everyone is paying extra attention to costs.
As we look ahead to 2021, we ask your prayerful consideration of your own giving plans when the Stewardship Committee asks us to make commitments. We hope that all who are able will consider committing to an increase in giving for the new year. Our work on the 2021 budget tells us that offering increases will be needed to offset decreases that we know are coming from non-offering sources such as multi-year grants. Whatever you give will be gratefully received and carefully used!
We are grateful for being part of a congregation that plans its own future mission. The next Congregation Meeting will be by Zoom at 11:30, Sunday, January 24, 2021.
A blessed Thanksgiving to each of you!
Stan Olson, president, on behalf of the Grace University Lutheran Church Council
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