“God the Father, light-creator, to thee laud and honor be. To thee, Light of Light begotten, praise be sung eternally. Holy Spirit, lightrevealer, glory, glory be to thee. Mortals, angels, now and ever praise the Holy Trinity!”—ELW 511

Bethesda’s pastoral team has been working together for almost 4 1/2 years. We’ve experienced a lot in that time with staffing changes and working with little support staff. We each picked up different pieces that were dropped by the staffing changes and we kept working and plugging ahead. One of the things that suffered during this time was our team building. We struggled to meet together regularly, we did have an occasional retreat but for the most part, we each did our own thing. Early this year, with the approval of the CPC, we brought in a consultant to work with the three of us and help us chart a new path forward. This was an important moment because it allowed each of us to recommit to our shared ministry and to begin to plot a course forward.

As your pastors, we are committed to meet together weekly for the purpose of checking in with each other personally, identifying areas that need our focus and attention, making decisions that need all three of our input, and praying with and for one another. This has been an important addition to our weekly routine. Beyond this meeting, we are scheduling time to delve deeper into subjects like worship, communications, and defining each of our roles in a way that we haven’t before. In the meantime, please know that you can talk to any one of us about a pastoral concern or idea. You can email all three of us at once at pastors@ bethesdalutheranchurch.com. We can then address the concern or idea at our next meeting. We have told you from the beginning that Jesus is the Senior Pastor at Bethesda and we believe that just as strong today as we did then. We also recognize that there are things that we can do better in our service of Jesus to enhance our team and serve his congregation more effectively.

We will give you updates as we move forward on our meetings and retreats as we work together to be the body of Christ in this place.

Peace,
The Bethesda Pastoral Team