Beta-Vitality Update : Strengths and Assets

This past Sunday we had the pleasure of meeting our coach, Reverend John Haller who will be leading us through the Beta-Vitality process for the next two years. Reverend Haller is a retired pastor from the Texas Southwest Annual Conference, significantly a graduate of the University of Texas. He and his spouse moved to Bellingham for her health reasons and they attend Garden Street UMC in Bellingham. We are blessed to have him working with us.

During the meeting after the second service, Reverend Haller led us in a process of discovering what we see as our strengths and assets. (Despite an attempt to distinguish strengths and assets it got a little muddled. Christy Herman, who is an accountant told me one way to think of assets is as a balance sheet – what we have that helps us accomplish our mission.) The task force is taking in all the sheets of paper that were filled out and putting them on an Excel spreadsheet – we will eventually be sharing them with everyone.

This information is only one part of what we have been asked to collect for the beginning assessment in t his process. On August 25 many of you took the survey – we are waiting for the results of that too – we must make assessments of our building, finances, provide 20 years of statistics and review the demographics of our area. From all of this information we will garner a better sense of who we are and what our potential is. On September 29 the task force will meet with Reverend Haller and undertake discussion of our first “module” (read, area of ministry). This first module will be chosen by Gail Grossman and Curtis Brown who are administering the project, based upon the information we provide them. After that we choose the modules.

That’s where we stand with Beta-vitality. It is our hope to keep everyone informed all through the process. If you have any questions please feel free to ask a member of the task force: Pastor Jim, Ellen Morehouse, Taryn Oestreich, Mark Glover, Mark Wilder, Miriam Molver, Janet Church and Jocelyn Matheny.