Reconciliation + Community Update
Listen to Debbie’s sermon below; the community update from various board members is at the bottom of this post.
Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
Ellen, reading from John 21:15-19:
After they finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? "He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. "Jesus said to him, feed my lambs. "A second time, he said to him, Simon, son of John, "do you love me? "He said to him, yes, Lord, you know I love you. "Jesus said to him, tend my sheep. "He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, "do you love me? "Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "do you love me? "And he said to him, Lord, you know everything, "you know everything, you know I love you. "Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. "Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, "you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever, "wherever you wished. "But when you grow old, you will stretch your hands "and someone else will fasten a belt around you "and take you where you do not wish to go. "He said this to indicate," those are notes, "After this, he said to him, follow me."
Debbie: Well, hi everyone, my name is Debbie Manning. I'm one of the pastors here at the table. Thank you, Ellen, I'm laughing because when Ellen started, there was a little baby voice out there, up there. You could have heard going, "Ellen, Ellen!" And that was my granddaughter Millie, who Ellen nannies for. So you had your own little cheering crowd up there, Ellen! Ellen is another one of those people amongst all you who volunteers her time and heart and energy. And so we're so grateful. I just wanted to second what Maggie said, that we couldn't be the church without each and every one of you and all the different things that you do. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Well, we are finishing up this four week series and we've been in that same text that you heard, that post resurrection conversation between Jesus and Peter. And during these last few weeks, we've looked at these interconnected, but very distinct themes of confession and repentance and forgiveness and tonight, we're talking about reconciliation.
And when I first thought about reconciliation, the thing that came to mind was my husband, my two son-in-laws, they have a text thread. We'll see if I can get all the language correct. And what the title of that text thread is, "Make it Right." And I thought, well, that's sort of about reconciliation, isn't it? Make it right. And when I asked my husband, hey, what's behind that, thinking it could be something super meaningful that I could start this message out with, he started to explain it. And I just sort of tuned out, zoned out and went, “yep, nope, that ain't gonna work.”
But I do sort of like that idea of reconciliation and make it right. Here's the thing with reconciliation in the church, it's foundational to our faith, isn't it? Because this includes divine initiative, our human response and the ongoing mission of being the church, of proclaiming and living out the good news of Jesus Christ. And what reconciliation does is it refers to the restoration of broken relationships between us and God, between us and one another. And just keep in mind, we can't separate those things, like relationship between us and relationship between God and each of us. Those are all one thing, we cannot separate them.
But reconciliation is all about healing. It's about healing divisions, not just in relationship with each other, but healing divisions in our society, in our culture, especially after when there's been conflict and injustice, broken systems, war. And reconciliation is always about transformation. It always changes us. And it's about moving from places of separation and hurt and brokenness and moving toward healing and wholeness and forgiveness and ultimately union.
And all of that is in this text that we've been looking at for the last month. After breakfast with the disciples, Jesus sits down, he has this conversation with Peter, he asks him three times, "Do you love me?" And each time, Peter answers in the affirmative. And then Jesus commissions him, right? He says, "Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep." And Jesus ends that conversation with the same words that he started the relationship with, chapters ago in John, "Follow me."
And the beauty of this text is this, God doesn't ignore our failures. He meets us in them and he begins the work of reconciliation. Three questions for three denials. Three times Jesus asks, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" And Jesus addresses Peter personally and directly. He refers to him by his old name and by his past. We know that story, we've talked about it for weeks that Peter had denied Jesus three times.
And then Jesus gives him three opportunities to affirm his love, mirroring the denial and symbolically reversing its effects. Those denials are kind of lurking in the background of this text, right? Cause it's not directly said, but Jesus brings those denials to light. And here's what's important in that. It's what I've learned the hard way over the years, that intent is important. When we are in conflict, when we have hard conversations, when we have failed and we enter into these stories, intent matters. Jesus brings Peter's denials into light. It's the elephant in the room and he doesn't do it to condemn him. He brings those denials to light so that he can heal.
The repetition is not to shame Peter, but to rebuild trust, to renew relationship. And he doesn't rebuke Peter for those failures. Instead, he reinstates him as the shepherd over his flock. Let's provide a profound act of forgiveness and grace. And the conversation, what it does for us is it shows us that love and repentance is the basis for renewed mission, not our failures. Reconciliation, it leads to mission.
And this is what's so important is Peter isn't restored for his own sake, but the sake of something bigger, for the greater good. He's given the responsibility to care for, to lead Jesus's followers. And each of Peter's responses, they lead to this, feed and tend my sheep. So he goes, Jesus goes beyond forgiveness and he actually entrusts Peter. He entrusts him again. And what we find is purpose and restoration. And this happens in every conflict, every hard conversation, every time we're moving toward reconciliation, just like Peter, we are humbled and we are changed. And what happens and what happened with Peter is that he grows, what's revealed is a deeper understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
And what we see is when Jesus says, "Follow me," he's not just talking about Peter and relationship, but he's talking about a life of sacrifice, setting ourselves aside for something far bigger than each of us. I like that idea that transformation, that change moves us toward a deeper commitment, a deeper surrender when it comes to following Jesus. I love that this text is so rich. I love that we could actually sit in this text for four weeks and see something a little different, learn something a little more about the way God works, about the way we are called to live our lives. And in this text, we see restoration of relationship, forgiveness, commissioning and responsibility and personal transformation and all of those things are key elements of reconciliation.
But what I really, really, really love about this text is that it's personal. It is personal because Jesus speaks directly to Peter. It's redemptive because it heals the deepest wounds of failure and haven't we all had those wounds? Maybe we have those wounds of failure. And it's empowering. Peter has this renewed vocation in God's work. Despite his failures, God's called him into something new, something bigger, something greater. And that is all good news for each and every one of us.
Now there is kind of a good news, bad news thing in that it's also costly. This whole following of Jesus thing and we talk about this here and there, it costs us something. It's sacrificial, it's not convenient, it's not always comfortable. It calls us into something deeper. It calls us into a full life. The kind of life we're willing to set ourselves aside for something bigger. It might even involve some suffering along the way.
You know, there is, Maggie, you preached out of this and so did I last year, this is an awesome book. I recommend it to anybody. A friend of mine who was going through grief counseling, through your grief counselor, Gino, recommend it's called The Amen Effect by Rabbi Sharon Brouse, ancient wisdom to mend our broken hearts and world. And she has a chapter that she calls, Write a Story.
And she talks about, a friend of hers, many of you may know him, we actually had a chance, the table years and years ago when we were back at Christ Presbyterian Church to hear from this man that she quotes, Bryan Stevenson. And Bryan is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. It's a human rights organization that's in Montgomery, Alabama. And he built this legacy museum and a national memorial for peace and justice. And the intent was to help us, us in this country to heal, to heal, to reckon with our hard past in this country. So right after George Floyd, during the pandemic, when there was a lot of racial justice uprisings, Rabbi Brouse invited Stevenson to end sermon dialogue during Yom Kippur. And they were talking about forgiveness, about repair, reparation, reconciliation.
And she shares this story that I think is very fitting for our conversation about reconciliation. And she's talking about Bryan. As his team was building the legacy museum, volunteers were sent across the American South to collect soil from lynching sites, places where black men, women, and children were murdered in the Jim Crow South in the era of racial terror.
He described sending one middle-aged black woman to a remote site in West Alabama to collect soil. And as she knelt on the ground to begin, a white man in a truck drove by. He slowed down. And then he stopped his truck and turned around. She was terrified when the man pulled over and approached her, asking her, "What are you doing?" And with all of her courage, she replied, "This is where a black man was lynched in 1937, and I'm gonna honor his life." And the man paused. And then to her surprise, asked if he could help her. He knelt down by her side and picked up soil with his hands carefully placing it in a jar. And when she began to cry, he apologized for upsetting her. "No, no, no, you're blessing me," she said. The two of them dug.
And finally he turned to her and said, "I'm just so worried that it might have been my grandfather who participated in the lynching of this man." And now they wept together. And at the end of the day, they returned to Montgomery together to place the jar of soil in the museum exhibit where it stands today.
Rabbi Brouse, she goes on to say this, and I think it's important. By digging up that soil together, they're putting to rest an old story and laying the foundation for a new one, bestowing dignity upon those lives that were taken and with love, planting a new future. And that is precisely what we must do, put to rest an old story, loneliness, isolation, polarization, extremism, broken politics, and an ailing spirit, and in its place, lay the foundation for a new story.
And I think that's what reconciliation is about. Maybe putting away the old story and laying the foundation for a new story. You know, in this sermon series, we've been calling what now, living our resurrected life, because we started this sermon series the week after Easter, the week after we celebrated the risen Christ, this return to life, renewal, restoration, reconciliation, laying to rest, as Rabbi Brouse would say, the old story, and laying the foundation for a new story.
And it feels like the work of resurrection, and that's what's so important. That's why we did this series, is when we celebrate the resurrection on Sunday, we're not done. It continues on. And there's something about resurrection, about following Jesus, that asks us to get up and move, to live differently, to cast our net on the other side of the boat, to come and have breakfast, and start a brand new day, a new life, to give existence to more life. And it's the ongoing response to Jesus's call, to follow him.
And what resurrection is, is God's continuing insistence and call for more in our life. And what that means for us is that we listen deeply to the hopes, to the needs, to the hurts, to the pain in not only our lives, but the lives of others in the life of the world. And we see the possibility of more life in each and every situation. And that it means we have something to do, something to move toward to more life. We move toward reconciliation, and guess what? We make it right. We make it right.
So what might that look like for you today in your life? For those that you love, for those who have hurt you, and those that maybe you've hurt. For those who frighten you, for those who are the same as you, or maybe completely opposite. In what ways can you do more to make life fuller, more beautiful, to make it right with the world? And I guess at the end of the day, how do you answer the question that Jesus asked? Do you love me? Because if you answer yes, that means we got the work of following Jesus. Let me pray:
Holy and gracious God, we are grateful. We are grateful for the way that you speak to us through these rich and beautiful texts, and that you remind us God that our sum total of who we are is not our failures, it's not our successes, but it's who we are created in the image of you and the call to us to follow you, to be good news in this world. The reminder that we fall down and we get a chance to get up again, to start new, to make it right, and that you continue to call us into these spaces where we can love one another, love the world, and step into beloved community. We pray it in your name, amen.
Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
Debbie: What I love about this community is we are family and we show up as we are and we meet each other and God meets us right here and as we look back over the past year and all the transitions, what we know is that God has been faithful. And important to us is to not just look back but to spend a few minutes talking about where we are and where we're going. Because in this past season we have had loss, we have had new love, we've had a lot of new life and amazing things have continued to happen in this community as we continue to grow and I think one of the things that is really big is our move. After eight years of meeting in the evenings we decided with lots of prayer and thought and trusting in God's faithfulness we moved to the morning and we moved spaces.
And I think we'd all agree that the life, the affirmation that this was the right move for this community has been overwhelming. And as you saw on the slide our numbers with kids, I mean that's just crazy where we've come. And every Sunday our team shows up here and after the first week we thought, you know, there's a lot of excitement, energy, it's brand new, maybe the second week, but here we are a few months later and we continue to grow. We continue to hold on to this call from Jesus to follow Him, to be good news in this world. So I just want to say we are grateful. We're grateful that you've all stepped into this, that you've stepped into all those spaces of loving and serving and just being part of what we have here at the table.
And here's our mission, which we stand by. We are community practicing the ways of Jesus by creating space for all to belong and all to be loved. So with that we have a few updates that we want to give you. We want to do it in service so you're all here. We're going to do it quick, but it matters and it's important. So I'm going to invite Jonathan Keller up and he's going to tell us a little bit about giving.
Jonathan: Thank you. Hi everyone. So as Debbie said, I'm Jonathan Keller. The most meaningful distinction I have in this community is that I'm Maggie's husband. A couple of meaningless distinctions I have is that I have, I'm a million miler on Delta. And when I crossed that million mile threshold a few years ago, I'm almost a two million miler now actually, but they gave me a nice backpack. The second meaningless distinction that I have is that I think this is roughly my two thousandth time in a church service, which the reward I got was being able to speak in front of you.
So a little bit about my background is that I grew up the son of two pastors. So I got to see the church from a different perspective than a lot of you. I got to see how my family's finances were directly impacted by the church's finances. I also got to see, you know, people give these types of talks dozens of times. I've seen people give testimonies about giving dozens of times.
And what was impactful to me was as I was learning about the church budget as I was growing up and I was learning about my family's budget, I realized there was a line item that my parents, my parents got, all of our income came from the church. And I realized there was a line item that we gave back to the church. And I always thought, that's really inefficient. Why are we doing that? Like you're getting this much money and then you're giving 10% of it right back? That seems really odd.
When my parents tried to tell me about the practice of tithing or giving back and that they believed in the work that the church was doing and that this was actually an act of faith, an act of service, I didn't really get it. I didn't really get it until I graduated from high school and went to college and started making my own money in college. And I heard sermons about giving and about tithing and about what it was about. And I finally had the opportunity to do it myself. And I realized that it wasn't about an efficient transaction of money.
The reality is, what I realized was that God created everything. God owns everything. God doesn't need our money. But what we need to do is actually recognize that. We need to recognize that God has everything. And that we are dependent on God. We're not dependent on what's in our bank account. And that's a really hard thing to realize and to learn. But once you do, it's transformational.
And so one of the things that's been profoundly interesting for me now as I do have a wife that works in the church is that we also have a gift. And we actually give more than Maggie makes to this church. And it's a really odd thing to do to basically say, "Oh, here's all this money that we get in and then we put all this money back out." But it's something that changes your heart to be able to give up control over those finances, to give up control over what you make and what you earn, and to turn it over to God and say, "God, you do with this what you want."
And part of that is being able to give to a church. Part of that is being able to give to other nonprofits. Part of that is giving to homeless people you see on the street. Part of that is investing in your kids. Part of that is investing in your local communities, maybe investing in businesses, honoring your parents, honoring your children, all of that stuff.
But the transformation that happens when you give, the thing that changes your heart and changes your mind and how you think about things is actually just relinquishing that control and saying, "God, here, you take it and do with it what you have. Do with it what you will." And so that's what I just encourage all of you to think about.
If I can do this, I've been here 2,000 times, not this church, but services thousands of times quite literally, and I'm not even 40 years old yet. And I saw what life was like as my parents were pastors and as we didn't have much money growing up, but that they gave and that we can do that now and we're demonstrating it for our kids too.
This is a powerful place of transformation, and I would encourage you to think about how we can make that for this coming year and for years to come, and think about the transformation that can go on inside your own hearts as we give. So I'm inviting Mark and Shane to talk about exactly what we need to do in terms of our finances.
Shane Harjes: All right. Thanks, Jon. So as an introduction, I'm Shane. I currently serve as treasurer here, and I'm sure you guys are all here to talk on Sunday about finances. So Patti, if you don't mind, we move on. So to start, I just want to thank everyone here, this community, this organization, everything that we do would not be possible without the incredible generosity and support of all of you, and we take that incredibly seriously. We take that incredibly seriously, and because of that, we want to be really transparent with you all and show our finances and everything that's going on with our church so that you guys have some insight into how we operate as an organization so you can make decisions as families and so we can make decisions as a community together.
And if we look back this last year, in total, we brought in about $294,000 of revenue and about $293,000 of expenses, which brought us to a net income of about $1,000. We did a pretty good job of keeping that in line with our budget for the year, about 2%, which when you look forward at our projections of what we expected, that was within about 2%.
Across our bank accounts, we got about $115,000, and one change that we made with the church in addition to the donations that we made was investing in money market funds to get about 4% on our cash, which helps alongside the donations that you guys are giving.
And if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide. Part of this is also full transparency. We want you guys to know where your donations go and how we use that money as a church to operate. And so one of the biggest expenses that we have is the amazing staff that makes this place run. That's about 74% of our budget goes to the staff and that's not including the incredible volunteer work and all the people that put in their time to also make this place run with no pay. It's incredible how many hands it takes to make a community like this operate.
Outside of that, we have worship ministries, community ministries, and then our kids program, which what was it, 33 to 88 kids? It's insane. We've had such crazy growth. That's part of what we're trying to do here is talk about our finances, what we've done, but also looking forward how we can grow as an organization. Next slide, please.
Other two expenses want to break out how donations work here at the church. One of the biggest ways that we get donations is through recurring giving. And so as we look across the various, everyone in the congregation, we have about 60 regular donors who give on a monthly basis and that's broken out as you can see here on this fun table. I won't go through that in detail with you because that is just not going to be that much fun for anyone involved. But if you have any questions on details here, feel free to talk to me or Mark afterwards. Happy to enter it out with you. Next slide, please.
The main thing we want to highlight though is the past year, looking at all the donations we've had and then the expenses we have over time. We've done a great job of tracking our budget, basically. We're actually well ahead of it going into this move. And as a result of the move, we've had some people who can't make it on Sunday mornings. We also have an increase in rent. We have certain expenses that come up, things that just make operating this community and growing as a church a little bit more not difficult, but just there are extra expenses that come with that. So we saw a nice little decline in that blue line below, the red one. We're still positive for the year, but it is going down a little bit more than we would like it to in the near term. Next slide.
So right now we are getting about $20,000 a month in recurring giving and have a shortfall of about $5,000 a month if we look at our expenses going forward. What we're hoping to do is make up that shortfall and basically continue to grow our kids' ministry, grow our community, and continue to make an impact here. And with that, I've got more exciting news rather than the bad news to come from Mark.
Mark Harmon: Thank you, Shane. That's a hard job. That's a really hard job. I get to do the fun part. So as Shane kind of touched on, recurring giving is a huge, huge benefit to our community. There's a reason for that. It allows us to plan out our financial year. If we know what recurring giving is coming, we know how to best steward your money, how to best spend it and plan it all out. So every amount of recurring giving matters, whether you're giving $5 a month, whether you're giving $5 million a month, as I'm sure there's lots of those. It goes a really long way.
So we have a little bit of a shortfall in recurring giving right now, but we have an amazing opportunity. A family within this community came forward and said, hey, and honestly, we would love to match dollar for dollar in the next 30 days up to $5,000 in donations. So we are incredibly blessed to have this opportunity, but we need your help to reach and to get to the maximize, to maximize that gift.
So how this works. So if you are currently a recurring giving, recurring giver, excuse me, let's say you give 20 bucks a month. That's a huge deal. We appreciate it so much. If you could consider going from $20 a month to $25 a month, that $25 will be matched dollar for dollar by this family and will be able to double the impact of your gift. So that's a huge deal. If you're not a recurring giver, that's totally okay. Maybe you're new to this community. Maybe you're just starting to get settled in. If this is the right thing for you to start right now giving, it is a time where you will be able to have double the impact when you normally would. We'd love for you to preferably consider that, even if it's a small amount. Any amount of recurring giving would be huge for us and allow us to plan our next year.
If you're someone who gives right now, who doesn't give on a recurring basis, but maybe gives at the end of the year, or gives through stock or some other way, there's also ways for us to match that within the next 30 days. Either you could give in the next 30 days or you can reach out to Shane or I and say, "Hey, we'd love to take advantage of this matching gift, so reach out to us and we can make that happen." I just want to pause. This is a massive opportunity for us, but I also want to acknowledge this was a really hard year and financially included. This is a tough year. We understand the ask we're making. We believe in this community. We believe in where we're headed.
This is going to be an opportunity that's the right thing for some people, but I also want to acknowledge that however you support this community, whether it's financially, whether it's with your time, whether it's with your prayers, we absolutely are so grateful for you. We couldn't do without you. Huge deal and it goes a long way. I just want to pause there. I'm going to pass it over to Debbie. If you have any questions about the recurring gift, anything at all you want to talk about, you want to talk about budget, anything like that, my name's Mark. This is Shane. We'll be out here afterwards.
How do you give? There will be QR codes that come up on this screen that you can scan at the end of this meeting and you can always go to thetablempls.com. That's the right website. thetablempls.com and there is a Donate link. If you can't figure out any of that, you can come find me personally. I will help you do that step by step, no problem. Appreciate you guys' time today and thank you.
Debbie: Hey you guys, can you give these guys another round of applause? I want to thank everyone for your patience and we were intentional in doing this and part of the service because you are part of this community and this matters. I wanted to thank Mark who just sort of stepped over from treasurer and Shane who's been stepping into it because honestly it's one of the hardest jobs on the board and there's a lot of responsibility that goes along with it. What I want to tell everyone in this room is that we believe that who we are and what we do and what we're about matters.
I will tell you quickly because we want to make sure we get out of here quickly that I'm in this role because I feel called to it. It is a calling. It's not been my dream. I like pastoral ministry but I'm in this role because God called me, He called our team, He called all of you to this moment now. I wanted to share too why I think the idea of giving no matter what you can give matters and the biggest thing right now for me is not only what we do in the neighborhood, how we give outside these doors but it's the little children in this community because I think we're all committed to having these little kids grow up knowing the love of God, know that they are loved just as they are, that they can show up and be loved and God chooses them before they choose God and that's big, that's important and we get to be part of that.
So with that said, I wanted to just, a couple of things. We have a board that's 12 to 14 people on any given year and I wanted to acknowledge the three people that are stepping off the board this year. They serve a three year term and that is Lori Larson. Lori stand up. Erika Shima, Erika stand up, she's been our president. And Chris Pope who's out of town but love to give a hand for Chris too. Oh he's here, I heard he was out of town. Lori you told me he was out of town, Chris Pope stand up!
We are a working board so people have big responsibilities in making this church run and being part of the life of this church so I'm so grateful because the second Monday of every month they show up and they're doing all sorts of things and it's important, it's important work. With that I want to invite first Erika Shima up and Sheems I'm going to not make you hold this but we have these flowers for her. Mark come on up.
Sheems is our outgoing president. Another I think I can say this another person who stepped into this not because she was like yes I want to do it but because God called her to it and she has done an amazing job over the years. Sheems you have been not only a family friend and a friend but I have grew in my appreciation for your wisdom. The right person at the right time to lead this board through some pretty heavy transitions and your wisdom, your thoughtfulness, your faithfulness, your commitment to the board, to this community has been amazing so thank you.
Stepping into role of president starting in June is Mark Harmon. So thank you Mark. When we asked Mark to step onto the board a few years ago he came for the board interview and he's humbly, we're asking him some questions about his experience, you know pretty young at the time—what were you like 25 or something at the time?—and he's telling his experience and I have so much to learn from you all on the board and the board president at the time Rachel Garton turned to the rest of and said he's way over qualified. So anyway we're grateful Mark to you and I'm going to hand it over to you guys.
Sheems: Actually can we, can I use one of the mics up here as well? Does that work?
Mark: Awesome. Well thank you all. So we appreciate your extra time today. We have three bullet points, three asks to make things really clear and succinct for you. I'm going to have Patti put that up on the slides, I believe there's a slide for that. Perfect. So three asks for you. So as I talked about I just want to reaffirm we have a really exciting opportunity. It's $5,000 in matching donations, please prayerfully consider that. If you're able to do so in basically any way please reach out to me. I just want to take advantage of this generous gift and to use it to catapult this community into growth in the next stage as we move into our new life here in our new location. So thank you, please consider donating. Number two.
Sheems: It's on now. Hey we know that not everyone can give financially but another way to get involved here at The Table is giving with your time and energy. You saw when people stood up for our volunteer celebration that almost everyone in this room is already doing that so we just ask that you continue to do that. Multiple ways to get involved and give with that time and energy from our kids working in all of our multiple kids rooms to greetings, serving communion weekly. That QR code is going to take you to the page that you can contact the right people to start getting involved if you're not already.
So please do that. Again financially is super important but also what makes this community keep running is the bodies in the room that are here doing that. So consider giving with your time and energy.
Mark: Okay and last thing, super important date for us. So as many of you know we've had a discernment team that has come together to look at what is the future of the table from a co-lead pastor perspective. We are super excited. We have a candidate we are looking to, excuse me, not looking to, we have confirmed is coming in the weekend of June 8th. He's coming in for that whole weekend. We're really excited about this candidate.
The discernment team and the board believe in this person and we want you all to see what we've seen to understand how amazing this candidate is and that happens by showing up on June 8th. We understand it's June, summer weekends are hard. Please please prioritize if you're a part of this community. If you want to be a part of the continued flourishing of this community please show up on June 8th. Meet Justin, show up, listen to him speak and be a part of this next stage in the community's future. So June 8th, give, get involved, all those things equally important. I believe that's as much as you need to hear me talk. So I'll wrap it up. Thank you so much everyone and we really appreciate your time. Thank you.
Sheems: I think one more quick note on June 8th. You know this team of people that have been all volunteers have worked incredibly hard for the past year. Yeah, since last July. To get us to a point where we feel like God has put this person in front of us and we're ready to take the next step and see what that looks like. This is the first time this community is doing this and so we're just trying to get it right along the way and so this group of people has made that recommendation to the board. The board has approved, you know, bringing that person here and so the board's really excited to meet them. We're really excited to have the community meet them and see what could be the next right step for us.
So nothing is in, you know, in stone. We're just trying to get it right but we believe that this could be the next right person for us to join Debbie as a co-lead so we ask that you make it a priority to come here on June 8th because it matters what that who that person is and how they interact with this community and it's just important that we kind of are all on the same page there. Okay, now I'll stop talking because we have kept you over time and we're really sorry about that.
So I'm gonna benedict us. Right after that we do have like a short piece of business to do. You're gonna hear the board nominees names and we're gonna take a quick vote if you're a member. If you have to scoot now, that's totally okay.
And then lastly it is Mark and Nancy Hirschfeld's 40th wedding anniversary today. So they have brought donuts to celebrate their anniversary. There is a wonderful picture of them in the next room so please go look at that and celebrate the Hirschfeld's. So with that, if you could stand and receive this blessing and a posture that is right for you, may that be with your arms out in front of you or at your side.
No matter who you are or what you've done, who you love or what you've lost, where you've gone or where you've stayed, there will always be a seat for you at the table because you are a beloved child of God and beloved you belong. You can be seated, you can scoot if you need to and we're gonna do a quick order of business. Yeah, kids, I'd say run and eat the donuts.
Okay, very quickly here we're introducing to you the next slate of board candidates. These people have all been nominated by the community and so as a reminder, these are elected people to represent you on the board and it's really important that we continue to do that as we continue growing and moving into this new space and new life that we have here at the church. So our candidates are, do we have a slide with their names? Yep, so we have Nancy Hirschfeld, Andrea Johnson, Keith Radke and Rebecca Rasp. Those are your candidates. Speak now or forever hold your peace. I was just kidding, but kind of.
So we just need to vote in order to get these people confirmed onto the board. So what that looks like is someone making a motion to approve these candidates. Wow, so many of you. All those in favor of these candidates becoming your next board representative, say aye. I'd say the motion passes. We're good to go. Go eat donuts and celebrate the Hirschfelds.