It is hard to believe that tomorrow is the first day of June. It feels like I just found out I was being appointed to a new church just a little while ago and now my time at Tom's Creek is almost over.
Yet, as a church we have continued to move forward to help Tom's Creek to grow and to make us a stronger and more connected church. One of the exciting opportunities that we have is to bring Rev. Amy Messler onto the staff of Tom's Creek. Yes, when she got married years ago she moved to Lutherville. Yet, COVID has opened up all sorts of possibilities and helped us to realize that we need to find even better ways to stay connected through the ups and downs of life. That is why starting tomorrow, June 1st, Rev. Amy will start as our new Pastor of Connection. Yes, we have the lead pastor which is me, Pastor Heath, and soon it will be Pastor Tom Young BUT she will be helping to provide better support for our church family.
Everyone knows we have one of the best church newsletters around. Pastor Amy has continued to provide that for us as a volunteer but having this part of the Pastor of Connection position will allow her to able to spend a little extra time on it. In addition, we have realized that some people really enjoy ZOOM small group/Bible Studies. For people that can not get out to come to in person groups it allows people to connect, to share, and to grow in faith and knowledge of God. She will be leading some ZOOM bible studies throughout the year and the first one will probably start in Sept./Oct.! Of course there will be in person options but this expands the number of people that can participate in Christian Education with other people in our church!!! In addition, Pastor Amy will be calling/texting/emailing to check in with people to see how they are doing. The lead pastor will still be visiting people in their homes, and going to hospitals, and checking in BUT this will allow people to get checked in on. There often is not a lot of extra time for the lead pastor to just randomly check in on people but Pastor Amy will be able to do just that. So she might call you up and just say "Hey, how is life going? How can we pray for you?" Amy loves to hear about people's lives and hear their stories. She will be able to pray with you and if anything important is going on pass it on to the lead pastor who might make an in person visit. Please know that this is a part-time position and she will not have a lot of hours to do all she will be doing but it is an enhancement to our ability to be a connected church.
This is an exciting next step for Tom's Creek. We want to make sure as we continue to grow that we are able to still be a church that knows each other, prays for one another, and journey's with one another.
In case your wondering I will be writing another blog later this week sharing about our one combined service on this Sunday at 10:30am. Stay tuned for that but for now just know that you might be getting a random call/text/email from Pastor Amy to just see how life is going!
At Tom's Creek we journey life together,
PH
