Each time our Session meets we have a detailed agenda befitting our practice of doing things “decently and in order”, as the Apostle Paul teaches us. We begin our meetings with a brief lesson and devotion, followed by prayer. If our meeting is in the evening, we share an enthusiastic thank-you to Audrey Little for preparing a delicious dinner for us. Our Clerk, Jo Ann Staebler, updates us on Presbytery activities and changes in membership.
We then move on to reports from our Ministry Teams. We now have 9 teams: Administration & Finance, Christian Education, Early Learning Center, Membership (combining Fellowship and Evangelism & Assimilation), Mission, Personnel, Property, Stewardship, and Worship & Music.
We don’t always hear from every Team at every meeting. We are trying to focus on different Teams throughout the year to help us all develop a better understanding of each Team’s ministry. In April we will hear detailed reports from two Teams.
First, we will hear from the staff and Board of our Early Learning Center. Did you know that each week hundreds of 2, 3, and 4-year-old boys and girls participate in different programs our ELC provides? Under the leadership of Linda Lindamood and Chris Fox, the children play, learn, and sing, all in a very compact 3 hours. It is a ministry that is easy to miss because it happens on weekday mornings in rooms that we think of as Sunday School classrooms, but it is a vital ministry and one we strongly support.
We will also hear a more detailed report from our Mission Ministry Team. This Team spends long hours wrestling with how we can best and faithfully respond to the overwhelming needs we see all around us, stretching from within our own church family, to places and people thousands of miles from us. The needs will always exceed our abilities and resources, so Mission has the difficult task of assessing where and how we as a community of faith are called to respond.
Mission has also been working to lead us in becoming more faithful stewards of God’s creation. The Team has developed an environmental stewardship policy that all Elders have adopted. We will implement the policy in all that we do here at MPC to help us reduce, recycle, reuse and tread more lightly on this beautiful creation. God reminds us in the Pentateuch that the earth belongs to him, and that we are to look after it for future generations.
I encourage you to pray for our Elders, that they be graced with wisdom, energy, and faithfulness. Our Elders work hard to serve God and this church. In all we do as the Session of our church, we are guided by the prayer offered by our Lord, that we seek to do God’s will, and not our own, and that makes our service a joy.
Grace & peace,
Pastor Skip
