2025 Annual Report
Dear Friends in Christ,
As an interim, a pastor comes in to give experience, diligence and faithfulness, but for various reasons, we often hesitate to give our heart and soul. You are making it very difficult for me not to bring the whole package. You are a creative and faithful witness to Christ in a world that is in desperate need of hope and love. And even though you are quite serious about being who God calls you to be, you do not take yourselves too seriously. For these reasons chiefly, and for many others as well, I am thankful that God has placed me here, and your next pastor will be blessed to be called to serve you.
In early February, your new Call Committee will be meeting for the first time. By the middle of the month, they will have met with the Transition Team for the baton handoff of the Ministry Site Profile (MSP), and before February is out, the Call Committee will have sat down with a representative from the synod. Please don’t hold me to specific dates, but I think it’s reasonable to hope that the MSP will be completed and in the synod’s hands even as early as mid-March, and that means the committee might have candidates to consider by early or mid-April. The creation of an interview process and a few practice interviews with area pastors will be fitted in there somewhere, and a final candidate could emerge sometime in mid-May. After that things could go quickly as I head out the back door and your new pastor is ushered in the front. Between now and then, of course, there will be a lot of work God will call us to do together.
I need for you to know who grateful I am for your kindness and grace. You have a gift for appreciation, and what I mean by that is that individually and as a whole, you look for things to lift up and be thankful for instead of picking at shortcomings. More than a few times I’ve told my wife after coming home on Sunday that either I’m a better preacher than I used to be or you are just kinder and more thoughtful than I have experienced in the past. I don’t think I’ve changed much, so I know where the credit goes. But it’s not just with preaching, and it’s not just with me. You include instead of excluding, you build up when you could tear down, you give thanks when the opportunity is there to complain.
All of these things in my “year-end report” may seem general, but it’s out of the general that specifics come, and if what is in the heart is good and right, what the mouth, hands and feet do will be the same (Matthew 15:18). So, I encourage you to “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it” (2 Timothy 3:24), and you and the community you serve will be well.
Peace,
Interim Pastor Steve