Update from Council – February 16, 2023

Posted on Feb 17, 2023 in Council Updates |

God’s grace and peace to you, Epiphany, from the President’s desk! Ash Wednesday is just around the corner, and Lent is one of my favorite seasons of the church calendar; a time of reflection, sacrifice and discovering strengths we never knew we had. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit within each of us. There is an order-disorder-reorder cadence that God places in our lives at key times, and it is through this lens that I write to you today. 

There are three things to communicate, along with a member call-to-action, so please take a moment to look over each with care. As always, please feel free to reach out to me as Council President if you have questions. Your Council is also available and here to serve.

 

Strategic Planning

I am excited about this. Strategic planning typically happens on an annual cycle, and for years Epiphany has been doing that, however, during the pandemic, many things were changed, necessarily. The strategy was still going on, but it didn’t occur in the same manner as it typically does. Instead, we had to look at our health systems, the CDC, and local municipalities for direction and strategy. I think we did a great job with that, given the situation was uncharted for everybody. Now, we need to get back to an annual planning process where we look at Epiphany’s mission, what our values are, and what priority items we should be focused on to continue demonstrating our love for Jesus through service. To kick things off, Council is providing an opportunity to respond to a 6-minute congregation-wide survey. We will keep this survey open for at least two weeks, giving you time to pray and respond. The survey aims to collect feedback on what inspires you, what comes to mind when you think of Epiphany, and how we uniquely serve in Christ’s ministry. There are also some visionary questions, such as naming one thing you would love to do if there were no boundaries. Of course, with God, we know there are no boundaries, so we ask you to pray and think through it with a faithful heart. We know it isn’t all about rainbows and unicorns, so we ask what isn’t going so well or feeling so good at Epiphany. All of these perspectives add to the richness of the feedback. Strategic planning will be happening over the next several months, and Council will continue providing critical updates, including other ways you can participate.

 

Parking Easement

Epiphany continues to strongly oppose the dramatic changes to our neighborhood which the construction of the Sheetz gas station, restaurant, and convenience store (with a liquor license, selling CBD products), operating 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, will bring to our neighborhood. The dramatic neighborhood impact will not only hurt Epiphany but also our other neighbors. Congregational Council President will update everyone when we receive any additional important information. Currently, we do not have any additional important information to share, which is new from our first communication. Each of you will have an opportunity to support Epiphany’s strong opposition at a future time. We will keep you updated.
 

Associate Pastor Call 

We are in the process of finishing up our candidate list for the call committee. As a reminder for those that remember when we called Pastor Julie, seven representatives is the “magic number,” and we’ll be reaching out to individuals soon to try to find the seven that are feeling led to serve in this way. It’s a gratifying, fulfilling way to give, but it also has to be the right timing and season for a person’s life. We appreciate that, and if you get a call, we ask that you pray about it and serve if you can. It will commence here soon, and it will complete on God’s time, though we are aiming for mid to late March. Once that is finished, the group of seven will get training by the Synod, and then they will start to set up the process of reviewing our Ministry Site Profile (MSP) that Council has been drafting. The MSP will then be published online for potential candidates for the associate pastor call to review, and then the Synod will send candidates our way, first hitting the call committee. Once they decide there’s a primary candidate fit for Epiphany in both their quality and the style we’ve provided in our Ministry Site Profile, the Council will review that. If Council feels they are the right primary candidate at that level, it will go to the Congregation for a vote. We’ll be providing more updates over time on this, but that’s the current status.
 
Until next time, God bless you, and thank you for all you do in service to Christ!
 
 

Anthony Brown

Epiphany Council President

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