Sally Narr--new Director of Children's Ministry at Chain of Lakes

It is my great pleasure to announce that Sally Narr is the new Director of Children’s Ministry at Chain of Lakes Church.   Sally was hired by the Chain of Lakes Steering Committee at our August meeting and started working here this week.  She will work twelve hours a week.

 

Sally has a proven record of building children’s ministries in main-line churches.  She most recently served at Director of children, youth and family ministries at Community United Methodist Church in Monticello.   While there she assisted the church in growing from 425 members to 514 members.   Before that she worked at Arlington Hills Presbyterian church, White Bear Presbyterian Church, and North Como Presbyterian Church.  She was also the executive Director of the Eastside Children’s Summer Program in St. Paul.  In each of these settings Sally left the church in a better place.

 

I have known Sally for almost 20 years.  When we talked this week we remembered that the two of us served as Adult Leaders at Youth Triennium in 1995 and 1998 and went on the Presbytery Mission Trip to Louisiana in 1996.  In meeting with her this week I was reminded that she and I look at the world and the church in a very similar way.  She will be a terrific colleague.

 

When she interviewed for the position, Sally shared that she had a deep desire to build and develop relationships with parents and their children.  Sally doesn’t have a program that she wants to implement at Chain of Lakes.  She wants to build relationships with families and children and then collaboratively discover where God is leading. 

 

In her cover letter for the job Sally shared that she loves reaching out to neighbors and welcoming children, youth and their families to the church.  These are qualities that we were searching for in a Children’s Ministry Director.

 

I want to encourage parents and children in the north Metro to seek Sally out.  I can hardly imagine a better mentor to help children and their families grow in faith.

 

I believe that God called Sally to this position.  I can hardly imagine a person who has the set of gifts that we are looking for in a Director of Children’s Ministry.  I can’t wait to see how the Spirit works in her ministry!

 

I want to close by sharing a very special thanks to the Education team for their work in hiring Sally.  I had the privilege of working with them through this hiring process.  The people on the Education team did seven phone interviews with candidates, they made decisions about who the team would invite for a face-to-face interviews, they did almost all of the reference checks, and they conducted the interviews of three final candidates.  The team and I spent about four hours doing the final three interviews.  Participants on the Education team are: Justin Leitch (chair), Kate O’Brien-Soltau, Lena Truong, Stacy Foreman, and Cathy Smith.  They did terrific work!