Over the course of 5 ministry meetings in July, 151 members provided feedback on our ministries and pastor options. On August 11, a Voters Meeting will be held to decide whether to call a third pastor. Please review the attached feedback summary document below in preparation for the Voters meeting.
Feedback on Pastor Options
_______________________________________________________________
Listed below is a summary of the feedback on our Ministries:
WORSHIP – STUDY – SERVE – SHARE : Ministries Feedback Summary
Members provided great feedback, discussed various challenges with our current ministries, and asked many questions about our ministry plans. The feedback is organized by various focus areas commonly brought up.
- Inactive Members: Much discussion on how to increase members active in Worship, Study, Serve and Share. More follow-up may be needed with delinquent members. It’s easy for people to slip away. If we love them, we all should be reaching out to them.
- Connections: How do we better connect members with each other as well as new members and the community. Continue to focus on communications across the congregation and look for ways to engage with members you may not know well during study and service opportunities.
- Assimilation: We have seen many new faces in to our congregation. How are we keep them engaged, studying, in worships, and serving? Put more focus on our assimilation programs.
- Youth Ministries: We have some study areas in place for youth, but not full coverage of all our youth especially missing areas between confirmation age through college age. How do we keep them engagement?
- Technology: How do we better leverage technology in our ministries (website, newsletter, communications, online studies/resources) We need to have a group that focuses on communication- website, social tools.
- Financial Stewardship: Much discussion on how we budget. Do we have enough funding to support ministries and staffing? Do we let our giving drive ministries or ministries drive giving? There are plans in place for a synod Financial Stewardship program to be done this September for our congregation.
- Foundations and Various Styles: Our congregation has over 900 members which also means we have many different preferences in styles of worship and bible studies. During the meetings, there were very strong feelings brought out. Regardless of the various styles that we continue to debate and discuss, there is not a question on the foundation of God’s word in our worship and studies. As a congregation, we need to continue to focus on God-focused worship verses People-focused worship.
- Unity: Discussion on how we continue to promote one congregation with two sites. As we grow, it seems to be more challenging in keep the two campuses feeling united.
- Church & School ties: With all the changes in staffing, leadership, and tuition support, how do we ensure strong relationship between the two; how we staff one verse the other seems to not be consistent any longer. General feeling from some that if you are not involved with School, you lose out, whether that is if you are a new member that does not have kids or has kids that don’t go to school or even families who no longer have school age kid.
- Outreach As our individual members continue to be grow spiritually through worship, study and service, a key further grow come in sharing their faith. There are many opportunities we have as a congregation to share our faith. New events have been added over the year.
- Ministries Planning: General sense of frustration with the fact that we keep passing budgets that seem to be beyond the giving capacity of the congregation. Are we a simple church? Do we plan to be? We have a bunch of new programs, but we need to fix what’s broken first.
A full listing of the feedback will be attached here in the coming days. It will be the full 17 pages that explains on each one of the core values and list various ideas and suggestions by members. The Council will be reviewing this feedback at our August Leadership Meeting. We will incorporate the feedback into our VTO (Vision Traction Organizer – basically incorporate ideas into our yearly plans), as well as outline specific quarterly Rocks (objectives) to focus on for this current fiscal year.
Thanks again for all members who participated in the feedback meetings. We pray God will bless us our ministries here in the Rochester community!
In Christ Alone,
Daryl Schultz
Resurrection & Life Lutheran President
