| Blessings Grace Family! These last 12 months have been challenging in so many ways! One of those has been our lack of being able to physically gather. Because of this, communication (electronic and other) has taken on a new importance in the life of our church. In this spirit, the elders wanted to send out a mini update to review some of the ways God has been working in and blessing our church during this pandemic. To begin, there will not be a Spring Covenanter meeting this year as we are not adding any new elders. In fact, Brian Holloway and Andy Flynt are both rolling off the board. We are grateful to Brian and Andy and their families for their service. Marshall is finishing his first year as Teaching Pastor at Grace, and we continue to be grateful for his leadership, especially as he focuses on being led by the Spirit and teaching us to make disciples. Our new Youth Pastor, Jake Sorber, has gotten off to an excellent start with our youth and continues to need our prayers as well as leaders for the youth ministry. He can be reached at jsorber@gracegso.org if you have any interest or calling in helping with the youth. We are very excited for the Pandemic relief fund that the church is sponsoring. So far we have been able to assist 50(!) families in our church and community for a total of $28,000. According to Dayna Carr, who is helping us with this fund: “We continue to see substandard housing as a source of calls — particularly poorly insulated homes that drove up heating costs over the winter.” The church has been faithful to give to this fund and God is glorified in your generosity! We are also excited that some of our Missional Communities have been going door-to-door in Glenwood to make sure our neighbors know that this help is available. The Elders continue to focus on our mission as a church as we seek to grow as leaders that make disciples crossing ethnic and economic lines. We also have adjusted our elder meeting schedule so that one meeting per month is dedicated to intentional prayer and discipleship. We ask for your prayers that God would lead and grow us into the people he wants us to be! In other news, we want to thank the Rayfield family for their years of service at Grace and specifically Kevin, as he has brought his tenure as our Treasurer to an end. The Rayfields are leaving Grace as they feel led to seek a new church family in this season. We bless them as they go and thank them for their service. They will always be part of our family! We are grateful that Jason Henkel has agreed to become the new Treasurer for Grace. He has been serving on the Finance Team for several years and has been invaluable in helping to lead the church with its finances. With Wendell Versaille’s resignation, we continue to work toward a plan for transitioning his duties to the appropriate people. We look forward to having an opportunity to celebrate Wendell and his family in the coming months! We hope and pray this glorious time of year is a blessing to you and we look forward to seeing more and more of you in the coming months as we recover from the pandemic. In the meantime, may the Lord bless and keep you, make his face shine upon you, and give you peace! Brian May, Elder Chair |