PERSONAL UPDATES

At the writing of this report my wife JoEllen is officially three years cancer free. We have another two years to go until she is declared cured of Lymphoma. We are deeply thankful to God for His mercy and the faithful support of Christ Church. I want to express my deep appreciation to the Vestry, staff and the people of Christ Church for the gift of a sabbatical in 2024. I called it the “summer of relationships” as I intentionally spent time with my wife, children and extended family building into those important and oftentimes, because of the demands of ministry, neglected relationships. The sabbatical was and continues to be a gift which is feeding my soul through ever deepening relationships.

I want to offer special thanks to Fr. Todd Blackham who after being at Christ Church for only four months stepped into the role of priest in charge during my absence. I believe my time away afforded Todd the opportunity to bond with the parish in a significant way without me as a distraction.

Finally, in 2025 my son Zech will be married in June and we are thrilled to have Kiley, his fianceé, as a member of our family. It is one of life’s deep joys to watch your children grow into adults. JoEllen and I are deeply blessed and profoundly thankful for all the blessings God continues to pour out upon us, particularly serving in ministry with the people of Christ Church.

STAFFING AND LAY LEADERSHIP

Staffing is one of the great challenges in any organization. In 2024 we were blessed with no major transitions. Our staff has served with faithfulness and dedication. I am deeply thankful for the gifts and contributions of all our staff. As we look further into 2025 and lean more faithfully into our strategic plan, we anticipate there may be changes to our staff as we organize to most effectively execute our strategic initiatives.

The first change of the year has been the transition of Fr. John Wengrovius to a more part-time role on the clergy staff. Please read his report (on page 12) and learn more about the transition and his role moving forward. As we intentionally implement our strategic plan, we will need the people of Christ Church to step into key roles and opportunities.

I am excited to see who will step forward into greater lay leadership to lead Christ Church toward God’s mission and vision for our church.

VESTRY

I want to thank the vestry for their diligence, hard work and faithfulness this last year. There has been some heavy lifting by our vestry members who have faithfully grappled with the strategic plan and the pressures and opportunities it presents. I want to thank Curtis Robbins and Steve Mulhern for their leadership as Wardens of the vestry. They have shown courageous and insightful faithfulness as they have led the way to engaging the strategic plan. I want to thank Chuck Woodward, Christi James, Pam Craig, Brett Rush, Denise Smith, Andy Colella, and Carol Hard for their prayerful and diligent leadership. They have been tireless in their service and ministry to our church. I want to express special thanks to Curtis Robbins and Christi James who have faithfully finished their terms on the vestry. Pam Craig has agreed to serve as a co-warden with Steve Mulhern for the next year. I look forward to working with them as we lead the vestry together. Finally, we have two candidates for the two vacant seats on the Vestry, Michele Pierson and Wendy Cowperthwaite. I am looking forward to working with the duly elected members of our parish whom you have designated as your representative.

THE STRATEGIC PLAN: WORSHIP

As you may recall last year, we presented to the Annual Meeting the Mission Statement which the vestry discerned through their hard work of prayer and reflection. This past year we developed in more detail the strategic plan in the implementation of the Mission’s five areas of focus; Worship, Formation (Whole-life Discipleship), Community, Ministry/Service and Evangelism (see Addendum A). The vestry has committed primarily, but not exclusively, to focus on the first three areas; worship, formation and community in the coming two years. As the wardens wrote in their report, worship is our first and foremost calling and it is through worship that we are most deeply formed.

In 2024 we assembled focus groups to help discern how we might expand our worship opportunities and explore new ways to worship in our sacramental liturgical identity. Fr. Todd, Dan Dufford and Curtis Robbins have collaborated to develop two new worship services which have started in the first quarter of 2025. Something Sacred on Wednesday evenings and The Fountain on Sunday evenings.

In addition, we are beginning to explore and plan a new service for Sunday mornings which will be shorter in duration, more interactive/participatory and family friendly. Our hope is to create a worship environment and experience which is less formal and more accessible, while still being reverent and worshipful. Most likely this service will begin this summer allowing us time to learn and experiment before the fall programming year kicks off. The goal of our worship expansion is to create different and unique worship opportunities and experiences which will engage people in new ways and encourage them to extend an invitation to their friends, family, neighbors and co-workers to “come and see.”

STRATEGIC PLAN: FORMATION

Our second area of focus in the strategic plan is formation. We are in the final steps of developing a paradigm for Whole-Life Discipleship which identifies seven key ancient spiritual Christian practices which will become the foundation for all of our formation offerings. The Whole-Life Discipleship (WLD) paradigm will form, inform and reform all of our children, student and adult formation programming. The WLD paradigm will guide the development of new forms and opportunities for adult formation, engaging the full breadth of people’s lives and integrating faith as the foundation to our identities, relationships and vocations. This fall as we kick off our programming year, you will see new offerings and opportunities to all age groups.

STRATEGIC PLAN: COMMUNITY

Our third area of focus in the strategic plan is community. Our plan is to expand offerings and opportunities for folks to connect in relationship. We want the people of Christ Church to be deeply connected with one another through authentic and faithful relationships. It is through community and doing life and faith together as the people of God that we become more like Jesus. Therefore, we want to set the stage for relationships to happen and flourish. In the first quarter of 2025 we are offering a new community group for mothers of young children called MomCo. In addition, we have expanded our community meals to include “Feast Day” potluck meals in-between services (Palm Sunday, Americana Sunday etc.), a community meal after the 10:30am service on the third Sunday of the month and a community meal following our Sunday evening 5pm service called The Fountain.

Finally, we have rebooted our women’s ministry which meets weekly and offers community and spiritual growth opportunities to the women of the church. In the summer of 2025, we will be assembling a Community Life Steering Committee of lay people to explore more ways to enhance the community events we already offer and identify new ones which we can implement in the fall of this year. If you love to connect with people in authentic community then please reach out. We would love to have you be part of the Community Life Steering Committee.

In addition to these three areas of focus we continue to implement our Narthex Project headed by Fr. Joseph Wolyniak our associate for Digital Engagement and funded by our Thriving Congregations Lilly grant. The Narthex project is having direct impacts upon our ministry and the strategic plan. Please read Fr. Joseph’s report and how the “80210” initiative of the Narthex project is guiding Christ Church to engage the community within our walls and chiefly in the immediate neighborhood surrounding the church.

It is exciting to see the many ways traditional analogue churches like Christ Church and others can wade into the digital environment we find ourselves in and learn new ways to engage the communities around us. The Narthex project has surfaced new opportunities which we did not realize when we applied for the grant, specifically AI and how that emerging technology can enhance and accelerate many of the ministry planning tasks we engage in at Christ Church. I am thrilled and excited to see how this new tool will impact and strengthen our staff and planning processes.

Counting the Cost

In 2025 we are intentionally and purposefully leaning into our strategic plan which we developed to strive toward what we believe is God’s vision and mission of Christ Church (see Addendum A). We are and will continue to press into expanding our worship services, redesign our formation offerings based upon our Whole-life Discipleship Paradigm and create opportunities for people to enter into deeper and life-giving relationships through community. All of these initiatives will cost us in time, resources and commitment.

This expansion of the life and ministry of Christ Church will call on each of us to contribute in our own unique ways. First, you will be invited to participate in our new offerings and be a zealous supporter of our new initiatives by participating yourself and inviting others to join in. You may be invited to help prepare food for one of our community meals, set up or break down for one of our new services, or teach our students, through your wisdom and experience, how to be a disciple of Jesus in the world. When asked, please say “yes”. Or better yet, step forward and offer yourself in service to others through our ministries.

CONSIDER YOUR GIVING

We will all be asked to consider our giving to Christ Church to support these new initiatives. The vestry has already made the commitment to support the ministry expansion dictated by the strategic plan by allocating monies from our Legacy Fund, $298,000 to invest in the missional expansion of the life and ministry of the church. This is an important step of faith by the vestry who see this unique time in the life of Christ Church as an opportunity to expand and grow as we pursue God’s vision and mission for Christ Church.

The vestry has set very clear bench marks on growth, 20% increase of average Sunday attendance, as an indicator of whether our strategies and tactics are being effective. By this time next year, we should have a clear sense of whether our worship expansion is bearing the fruit of growth. By this time next year, we should be able to measure whether there is new engagement with our Whole-Life Discipleship adult offerings and our new community offerings.

Our growth and engagement will be dependent in many ways upon our present members supporting these initiatives with your giving, both monetarily and your time. And most importantly making the invitation to “come and see” to those outside our church, our friends, neighbors, family and co-workers. The personal invitation is the number one strategy to drawing people into relationship with Jesus through His Church.

For more information about the missional funding of the strategic plan, please refer to the Finance (page 35) and Warden’s reports (page 9). The bottom line is, God has given us His mission and vision for Christ Church, we are faithfully pursuing it through our strategic plan and we are inviting everyone to lean into the expansion of our worship, formation and community ministries with faithfulness offering our support, time, talent and money.

I believe God is leading us into an exciting, challenging and faithful season of growth, deepening our invitation as we continue to strive to be a community of faithful whole-life disciples of Jesus by learning to be with, become like and live like Jesus.

Rector's Report