Dear Church Family,
I am excited about what God has instore for us as a church for 2023. 2022 was a remarkable year. We started the year discovering our purpose and vision. We developed our Biblical Purpose Statement and Vision Statement. We then developed a new church structure around the purpose and vision. We spent a lot of time and energy working on foundational issues. You helped put together a great plan and I truly believe that it was worth all the effort. Over the next year or two we will begin to see the fruit of those long Sunday afternoons. 2023 will be a time we will begin to see God use these changes to impact our community.
On January 15 we will have our first Quarterly Ministry Fiesta (QMF). I believe that you will come to love this new church tradition. They will take place in the Ministerio Hispano Building (Conference Center) and will begin with a pot-luck meal. For this QMF we are having chili and dessert. The theme will be different every quarter. Following the mealtime, you will have a time to hear from me and our ministry team leaders and have an opportunity to ask them questions. We will see the reports of the Stewardship and Operation Team (finance, personnel, and property) and have a business time to approve reports and other business needing church approval.
The big order of business for this QMF is the election of the Stewardship and Operations Team. This team is responsible for finance, personnel, and properties. In the future this team’s nominations will come from the floor during a QMF, but for this first team the nominations have been made by the Restructuring Team as approved by the church when you voted on the Restructuring Team Report. The seven nominations for the Stewardship and Operations Team are:
· Mike Coppedge
· Niccoli Dawson
· Virginia Dickey
· Gene Fisher
· Melissa Kerby
· Valerie Lewis
· Larry Marshall
Before I close this letter, I want to celebrate with you the amazing blessing from God in providing for our financial needs through the many faithful givers in our church. Though precise, official numbers are not ready to be published, I can confidently say that we finished the year in the black. We did not reach our planned budget, but we did bring in more than our expenses. For that we are very grateful. On top of the general fund giving, we received almost $60,000 above our regular payments to payoff the debt, giving us a yearly debt reduction, which includes our regular monthly payments, of over $167,000. If we keep this up, we will be out of debt in around three years. Releasing that money back into ministry will be a day of great celebration.
Thank you for letting me be your pastor. I love you and look forward to serving beside you in 2023.
Pastor Michael