First up

First Trinity certainly has a lot on its collective plate right now, so I thought it would be good to start a blog to share information and perspectives, build community and together work on determining how to respond to the opportunities and resources God has given us. Thus, most of the time posts will focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by FT, but sometimes posts will discuss our broader relationships to the ELCA and our DC Metro community. I find constant inspiration and challenge in reading The Lutheran, and so some posts will attempt to initiate a discussion of issues raised there.

Since we only joined FT two years ago I know I have a lot to learn about the congregation and its ministries. I welcome - and look for - feedback and opinions and opportunities to learn from what will surely be mistakes.

While Council elections are in June, the first meeting of the year was in early September. I have a vision for church councils that is different from those of a non-profit board of directors. For one thing we don't have enough staff to come together once a month, provide oversight and not worry about anything until the next meeting. Members of the congregation have taken on large areas of responsibilities for FT programs and ministries, and the Council must provide active servant leadership to our congregation. Therefore I have asked the members of the Council to look at their role perhaps somewhat differently than in the past. We will be discussing this at the October Council meeting and I will share more about this as the meeting gets closer.

Prior to the first Council meeting the Executive Council, Pastors Tom and Wendy, Vice President Ron Morgan, Minister of Financial Resources Greg Nelson and I, had identified three issues that will involve every ministry of FT in the coming year:

• Stewardship: We all need to be good stewards of all of our resources and all of our opportunities, and this means we need to focus on involving more people willing to share their time and talents. We need to develop ways of talking about and encouraging people to think more deeply about stewardship.
• Governance: In April the Council approved asking the Mission and Values Work Group to look at our existing ministries and those suggested during the development of our mission and values, as well as the way we are currently organized, and to come up with recommendations about how we might be organized to best support and reflect our new mission and values. We will begin this fall. The process will involve talking to Council members about their ministries, the way they operate, the human resources they have and need, and how they might relate and respond to those priorities suggested during the development of our mission and values.
• Redevelopment: Throughout this year we will to look not just at the opportunities and challenges posed by potential redevelopment, but at the transitional needs of the congregation if we were to move forward.

Future posts will focus on each of these issues in detail, as they each in turn become the focus of our attention.

Just prior to the first Council meeting we received a request from St. Matthew Lutheran Church (ELCA) to consider asking them to join with us in our worship and programs while they redevelop their property in Southwest. There has been much positive reaction to this idea and we are now working out the details. An upcoming post will discuss this opportunity in more detail.