NNUAL REPORT 2012
ANNUAL MEETING: February 3, 2013
First Congregational United Church of Christ
At 20 Oak Street in Downtown Asheville
PO Box 3211
Asheville, NC 28802
(828)-252-8729
www.uccasheville.org
Joe Hoffman, Minister
Gary Mitchell, Commissioned Minister of Music and Art
Harper Leich, Office Manager
Yolanda Adams, Ministry Coordinator
Report from the Pastor
Annual Report of the Pastor for 2012
It is always interesting to go back and review all that we have done as a congregation, and what I have done as the pastor, during a year. And it is often difficult to know what to highlight. That is again the case as I look back at 2012 and track our journey together.
This year has been one in which we have tried out a new model of governance and organizational structure. The details of that can be found in the reports from the Acting Governing Board and the Governance and Ministry Task Force. But I want to note how much work has been put into this effort by a group of 25-30 folk throughout the year. We are finding our way as we go, so the process is often fun, creative, and sometimes frustrating and confusing. We began the year under our old Executive Board system – with Phil Sageser as our moderator and Alice Martin-Adkins as Assistant Moderator. In May we voted as a congregation to experiment for a year with a 7 member acting board, and the dissolution of the Executive Board as we had known it. We did not and still have not changed our by-laws, merely allowed our Executive Board to give its authority to the acting board for this period of time. In May of 2013 the congregation will have to decide if we continue with the new model or return to the old.
I think the process of trying a new organizational model has helped us find new energy and hope for our church. Our work together has helped us move beyond “the ways we have been doing it” to ask – “what is it we feel called to be doing and how best can we do that?” That has stirred up some anxiety at times, for change can be hard – and we wonder what might get lost in the shuffle. At the same time, there have been a lot more people finding ways to get involved and share their gifts and talents. I like the path we are on.
We were surprised early in the year when Rev. Shannon Spencer resigned as our Associate Pastor in order to take a position as co-pastor of the Haywood Street Congregation – a new church start of the United Methodists working specifically with the homeless. While we were sad to see her go, I think we have come to realize that she has found a place to really live out her calling – and we support her in that. We are grateful for all the energy she brought and creative ministries she led with us.
We went several months – through the summer and early fall – without adding another staff person – and I am grateful for the extra work that Gary Mitchell picked up along with myself and Harper – and the extra effort given by the Governance and Ministry Task Force to keep essential ministries going. I am also very pleased that we came up with the idea of creating a new position – one we have called a Ministry Coordinator Position – to add to our staffing structure instead of immediately looking to hire another associate pastor. We interviewed several persons for this position and offered the position to Yolanda Adams, who had already been deeply involved in the work of the Governance and Ministry Task Force. This position is a contract position as we continue to discern if this type position is the right one for us to continue with in the future. My thanks to Yolanda for the creative and passionate vision she brings to her work.
During the transitions that have come with this year, I decided in the summer to create some new ministry options for our congregation in the short term. I started a Monday night Bible Study around the “Big” Stories of the Bible – and that was a great deal of fun as about 10-15 of us gathered and learned from each other. I will continue that type of Bible Study again during Lent – and probably keep it going until mid fall or so.
I also began a series of summer, intergenerational outings for any and all in the congregation to participate in which included a cookout at Craggy Gardens, a Creek Walk at the Mills River Campground, and a visit to the recycling center to learn more about how all our home recycling gets sorted and used. Those events were a lot of fun and helped many of us connect and get to know each other.
Harper Leich has continued doing an excellent job keeping our office organized and producing our weekly e-news, our weekly bulletins, our webpage, our Facebook page, and a number of special items through the year. We have received many wonderful comments about the style of our bulletins, and especially about the art work that is now included. We have been doing this since mid year 2011, but the purchase of a new copier that allows us to do color art images has really been appreciated. Harper chooses most of the art for the bulletin, a task she is well suited for as an artist herself. I have a lot of confidence in her work and appreciate the many gifts she brings to our staff team.
And speaking of the Administrative Assistant position, we were very saddened last summer at the sudden illness and quick death of Jo Larsen, who was our church secretary for 25 years – retiring just before we left our interim space at Kenilworth Presbyterian and moved into this downtown building. She was much loved by the people of this church and now missed with sadness but also great appreciation for all of her service.
I want to express my gratitude to Gary Mitchell for his leadership – and especially in the area of arts and music – although he has many responsibilities in various areas under his portfolio. Much of what he has been doing for us in the past year or so illustrates well what it looks like to be a public church. For example, this last year he created a singing group called The Oak Street Singers and they toured Germany – making connection with a German congregation that has been to visit us a number of times. The home concert they performed for us was incredible, and we had a good many folk from the larger Asheville community attend. The art gallery that changes every month in the front hall of the church is another way we connect with the public as passersby often observe the gallery as they are walking by. A third example is the liturgical art Gary creates for our sanctuary, connecting us with the larger church through liturgical order and style, and also creating for us an inspiring worship space. And finally, the various kinds of music that we have each Sunday from the chancel choir, the handbell choir, and the various special musicians that offer a wide range of music styles and come from many traditions.
We saw many changes this year in our ministries. One change was in the location of our annual all church retreat which has now been coordinated all three times by Yolanda Adams. It was a hard decision, but Yolanda led us to see the advantage of changing from the Blowing Rock Conference Center to the Episcopal Retreat Center not far from Canton, NC known as the Lake Logan Conference Center. The theme was “Practicing our Faith: Living Daily through the Teaching of Jesus.” It was a wonderful retreat in which many attended – some only for the day on Saturday, which was one of the benefits of the new location. Our thanks to Yolanda and all who made the retreat such a success.
Another change came when we realized that it was no longer necessary or essential for us to continue the New Year’s Day event with the homeless that we began 5 or more years ago. The agencies in our city have learned that they needed to be open on this day, and have now begun to do so. Also, the city has begun limited bus service and some public spaces are now open on this day – so that it is not a day when the homeless are so vulnerable with no services. I am very grateful that we were able to fill this gap so creatively and lovingly for these 5 years, and am glad that now we can let this go and put our energies in new places.
We also began this past fall an Inter-Generational Sunday School class for 2 Sundays a month as a response to a smaller number of children and a gap in ages of those children in our church. We quickly learned that this model works well for us – although we have also learned that we need to be more consistent and creative with what we do. That is a goal the staff has taken on – along with discerning where the Children’s Church program fits into this bigger picture. I want to thank Meg Word-Sims for her work at organizing Children’s Church after Shannon resigned, and to Virginia Himmelheber and Emily Townes for leading a broadly aged children’s Sunday School class on the Sundays the Inter-Generational Class was not meeting. In addition, I am grateful to Leslie Boyd for working with the youth on Sunday mornings.
The changes we are making in our program ministries runs parallel to the changes we experience in the cultural shifts around us. I have been attending UCC training sessions to learn more about this, as well as talking a lot in person and via email with folks around the country who are trying to discern what works in their churches as they adjust to the same shifts we experience. One such observation is that more and more churches are having trouble maintaining a Sunday School program for children and youth prior to worship. Thus, the emergence of Children’s Church as a learning experience is one response many churches are trying. While I have resisted this change in past years I am now coming to see the importance of it – at least in the short term as we continue to discern how best to teach our children the stories of our faith.
One such model that I am very interested in has to do with a new program called Youth and the Public Church initiative – a program run by Augsburg College in Minnesota. I have just learned of this program, and look forward to engaging the program director in conversation soon. But the essence of the program is that Christ calls us to be disciples in the world, and discipleship is the active process of learning how to follow Christ into the world. Thus, we need to be involved in a dynamic process of engaging our youth and children in intergenerational groups that are proclaiming the presence of Christ in the world as we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, etc. – while simultaneously reflecting on these actions through our own faith stories and traditions. I think this is what we have been trying to begin with the intergenerational Sunday School class – and now will try to enlarge and build upon.
Such a new model of discipleship learning will also help us engage with issues and concerns that many of us have – and which are critical to the life of a public church. One example might be our awareness and learning how to be faithful in a world where climate change is becoming a significant reality. Another example would be our work with the Campaign for Southern Equality and other LGBT advocacy groups and support groups – like Youth OutRight which meets each Sunday afternoon in our space – in the work for equality and justice for all people. A third example might be the Nicaragua Team’s spiritual pilgrimage to Nicaragua in November to learn about the people and ways of life there – and to become more aware of how policies in the United States have impacted these people both positively and negatively. These are the issues of our time and our day – and proclaiming the gospel through our lives and our work in relation to such issues is essential to the life of the church.
I had many wonderful opportunities this past year as your pastor, some of which I want to name briefly. I had the opportunity in February to travel to Boston and preach the ordination service for Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, the Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality – whose offices are housed in our church. Through that experience we are forming a partnership of sorts with the church that hosted the ordination – Hope Central UCC in Jamaica Plains. I have served this past year, and continue to serve as the chair of the board for the Campaign for Southern Equality. I also continue my role on the governing board of the North Carolina Council of Churches, and have just agreed to serve a second 3 year term. And I am co-chair of the Asheville Task Force for the Wake Forest Divinity School, a new role that will allow me a voice in how the school might bring theological educational programs and interns into the Asheville area. I also had the first time opportunity to serve on a theological school accreditation team to discern if Union Presbyterian Theological School was deserving of a new 10 accreditation status. The use of local church pastors in this process is brand new – and I am grateful to Tisa Lewis – a long time member of our church currently doing this work out of Pittsburgh, for inviting me to participate. Such opportunities are wonderful learning events for me.
I also continue to participate once a month in a small group of men who are either pastors or non-profit leaders to do work around racism. It is a group that I am so glad to be part of. I enjoyed and learned so much during my time with the Nicaragua team on our 10 day visit. And I had the great fortune in the fall of the year to meet Anglican Bishop John Osmers who wanted to meet with the staff and some of the board of the Campaign for Southern Equality to encourage us in our work. Bishop Osmers lost a hand and was seriously injured in a mail bomb in 1979 while working to end apartheid – and I will never forget one thing he shared. He said, “When I realized our work was so important that someone wanted to kill me, I decided I had to go about it with all the more vigor and energy after the bomb, because this was certainly a cause worth dying for if that was necessary.” He was a great inspiration to us in our work. And finally, I traveled across the state and into South Carolina with several stages of the We Do Campaign, a part of the Campaign for Southern Equality, throughout the year.