New Ministry Staff

Dear FBC Heath Family,

As I shared with you back in January, we are making a concerted effort to increase our outreach to young families by improving and expanding our preschool, children, and youth ministries.

The first step in that was to begin the process of renovating our preschool facilities. The cost of that project will be around $190,000, and it is our commitment to pay cash for this expense. So this past March we began to collect the needed funds. As of today, four months later, through your generosity and sacrifice, you have given $140,722.45! Construction will begin as soon as we have the needed funds in that account.

This Sunday we will take another step in this effort to reach more young families. We will ask the church to create two new ministry staff positions. Both of them will be under the umbrella title of “Family Ministry Directors”. We have asked Phil and Christine Lintz to serve in these positions once they are approved.

Phil will be working along side Pastor Troy in the youth ministry. We will eventually see that ministry split into a junior high and a senior high ministry. It is our desire to see our youth ministry grow to reach more and more young people. One of the steps we believe is needed for this is to free up Troy’s time to focus on the Senior High youth and then to have Phil focus on reaching and discipling the younger ones.

It is often difficult to preach a message to teens when you have 12-year-olds and 18-year-olds in the same group. Many of the issues an eighteen year old in our culture will face are different from those the twelve year old encounters.

Troy and I have spent much time talking and praying about this, and we believe this will be a valuable step toward increasing the effectiveness of our youth ministry.

Christine will work with Pastor Wally in the preschool and children’s ministry. With the new preschool facility, our new security procedures, and our expanding children’s ministries, we simply need more hands on deck. Christine has become a great assistant to Pastor Wally and an effective leader alongside many others in our children’s ministry in the last year. Pastor Wally and I are looking forward to seeing how an expanded role for Christine will help us reach more families.

In order to facilitate these new positions and also to increase Pastor Troy’s salary to better reflect his responsibilities, we will need to make some financial adjustments. I believe at this time, with the financial climate of our nation and state, we do not need to increase our budget requirements. So I have asked Scott, our administrator, to identify sufficient funds that we can move from one area of the budget to another to take care of this need. He has put together a recommendation that will accommodate the change without negatively impacting any of our ministries. After the church approves this ministry step, we will ask the finance team to officially make those changes.

If you have any questions, please call or email me or Pastor Wally at the church. Or you can contact any of our church council members. We will try to answer all your questions during the week. Sunday we will vote without discussion in our morning worship service.

I am thankful for how the Lord has provided our church with such excellent leaders… both those I get to work with on staff and those godly, faithful laypeople in our church.

In Christ,

Pastor Noel

Church Staff Reorganization

Below is the letter I mentioned in the previous blog post....

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Dear church family,

Last Sunday I was able to make a much anticipated announcement concerning a new reorganization of our church staff. Jeff Salyer, the leader of our church council, shared in the morning worship service about the goals and the procedure for this reorganization. In the 5:00 service, I shared some of the details and the benefits of this reorganization.

I am very excited about how this is going to benefit our church, impact our community, expand the kingdom of God, and bring honor to our Lord.

Let me briefly describe how the reorganization will work...

• As senior pastor this reorganization will allow me to focus solely on the 4P's of pastoring. More on that in a moment.

• Administrative pastor Wally McLaughlin is promoted to associate pastor. He will share leadership responsibilities with me, be the chief go-to person on matters of pastoral ministries, and he will lead our children's ministry.

• Worship pastor Shawn Gierling and youth Pastor Troy Kirkpatrick will have largely the same responsibilities as they do today, but the reorganization will allow them to approach their ministries in a more effective manner.

• Scott Parry will come on staff full-time in May to be our administrator and director of ministries. Scott will handle the financial, support staff, and physical plant administration of the church. More importantly, Scott will serve as the project manager for every ministry in the church.

Why are we making this change? What are the benefits to the church and to our ministries?

There are many benefits to this new plan. I believe this is going to help our church reach the next level of ministry and effectiveness. Briefly, here is what we believe this reorganization will provide...

• We believe it will allow us to multiply the effectiveness of our pastors. It will do this in two ways. First, it will help by relieving the pastors of some of their administrative responsibilities so they can spend more time directly on ministry. Secondly, it will help the effectiveness of the pastors because we will be more organized, more proactive, and more purposeful in every ministry because of what Scott can help us with in terms of project management and ministry evaluation.

• The new reorganization will allow me as the senior pastor to focus on what I believe the Lord has called me to do and how I can best benefit our church. I believe a pastor is most effective when he focuses on the 4P's...

• Preaching... this reorganization will allow me to spend more time in the preparation of messages for our worship services.

• Prayer... this reorganization will allow me to spend more time on the ministry of prayer and the word as is commanded in Acts 6.

• People... this reorganization will allow me to spend more time with people. It will allow me to give greater emphasis to discipleship and leadership development.

• Planning... this reorganization will allow me to spend more time developing long-term and strategic plans for our church.

• Children's ministry will benefit greatly from this reorganization. I believe that the growth of our church is directly tied to the effectiveness of our children's ministry in the next few years. This reorganization essentially gives our church a full-time children's minister. I cannot wait to see how the Lord will bless us through this new emphasis in ministry.

• There are many ministries in our church that will become more effective and more strategic now that we have a staff member, ministry director Scott Parry, to provide focus and accountability each step of the way.

• I believe this reorganization will allow our church to continue to strive for excellence as we serve the Lord and serve our community.

There are still parts of this reorganization that will develop over time. It will take some time to implement all of the changes. I believe you will begin to see results from this change by the end of summer.

I hope you will pray for the wisdom and discernment of our church leaders, both the pastors and lay leaders. I hope you will pray for Scott and his family as they make the transition to our church staff. I hope you will pray that our church will be all that God desires for it to be in this community.

Thank you for letting me to serve as your pastor...

Pastor Noel