All Church Vote Scheduled

We have scheduled an all church vote on September 10th at 10:30 am. Now take a breath, we are NOT voting about disaffiliation. As a matter of fact, our church Administrative Board voted to be a Lighthouse congregation. What that means is that we have covenanted with the Oklahoma Conference that we will not disaffiliate and they are safe to send people from churches who have left to us for potential membership. It has come to my attention that Christ UMC and BAFirst both voted to leave the denomination this week and I have already been contacted by people looking for a new church. They want to know that if they come here, that they won’t have to go through the same process. So please look for folks who might look like they need a little help on Sunday. Invite people to your Sunday school classes. I remind you that these folks are grieving and upset and wounded by the politics that have divided the church that they had loved.

Our vote is about restructuring our leadership here at Faith. We have made presentations about this potential new model to every Sunday school class, every church committee and in two Town Halls open to the entire membership of the congregation. We also have the information on the website and you can read up in case you don’t remember or need clarification here. Our Nominations committee first brought this idea to the Administrative Council three years ago and we have been in prayerful discernment and listening to the congregation ever since. Currently we have over 40 volunteers who serve on our administrative committees. If we go to this new model, we could have fewer people doing administrative work and more people in kingdom work. Our remaining committees would be the Leadership Team and the Nominations committee. Everything else would have teams or task forces for specific roles. The current Administrative Council is recommending this new leadership restructuring for the vote. On September 10th at 10:30 am, all professing members will gather in the sanctuary and the vote will simply be a raise of hands for or against.

Finally, I want to celebrate our first Wednesday night back and all the people who were here. The Meditative Movement class was soo big that we had to move them to the Chapel. The Disciple class was full. The youth set a new attendance record for Wednesday night since Mark became our Youth Minister. And the kids wing was full of joyful noise! It was a great way to kick off the school year. I am excited that we will have another adult class starting at the end of September that will only be for a few weeks. It is a discussion group around the series The Chosen. More details will be coming soon!

Grace and Peace,