I suspect that many of you have heard by now my announcement from Sunday that, effective July 1, I am being appointed to a new church (actually two churches) on the coast of Maine. If you missed the video I would invite you to watch it at this link. I've had a number of questions since then about the whole process. It made me realize that because I have been here so long, most of our folks are not really familiar with our United Methodist process in regard to pastoral appointments.
So, I thought it would be good to give a brief overview. As a United Methodist church, we are an “itinerant” church. What that essentially means is we have a pool of pastors within our geographical area (what we call the New England conference). From time to time, pastors are moved from one church to another at the direction of our District Superintendent and Bishop. Sometimes those moves come for missional reasons, where a pastor may be asked to move even if a move wasn’t requested. But often the moves are initiated by the pastor or the church's Staff Parish Relations committee.
In my case, as you may have seen in the video, I have felt for a while that God was calling me back into a church planting or congregational redevelopment setting. Out of that leading from God, I shared with our DS a number of months ago that I would be open to a new appointment if it was in a church there was in need of redevelopment. The DS and Bishop identified a setting they felt worked well with my gifts, and passion for redevelopment, and have appointed me to move there. All appointments officially begin on July 1st. This is so all pastors who are moving will transition on the same week. So, the week leading up to July 1, we will be preparing to move to East Boothbay and Southport Maine. At the same time our new Rock Church Pastor (soon to be selected) will be moving here.
I know some folks have wondered how Pastor Jake would do everything by himself. Rest assured, we will have a second pastor and will likely be on the lookout for an additional Campus Pastor in the near future. I've also heard that some have wondered if our pastoral transitions have been in some way connected to the upcoming General Conference in April. General Conference is an every 4-year gathering of representatives from Methodist conferences from throughout the world. There will be some important matters being addressed at General Conference, but our transitions are not in any way tied to that.
We will be holding congregational meetings on April 7th in Sandown, April 14th in Plaistow, and April 21st at North Shore to address questions related to General Conference. I would encourage all who are interested to attend one of these. All three are open to everyone, so you are welcome to attend the one that best fits your schedule.
Before I sign off, I do want to remind you that this Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. We are putting our current sermon series on hold for Holy Week and will finish it up after Easter. During Holy Week we will have a special Maundy Thursday service at 6:00 pm in Plaistow and a Good Friday service at 7:00 pm in North Shore. I hope you will put those on your calendar and plan to join us.
Finally, I want to invited us to keep Pastor Paul and Lisa in our prayers as they prepare for their move to Alabama this coming week. Have a blessed week.
I love you all,
Pastor Steve