May Presbytery meeting

Chain of Lakes disciple Val Owens and I attended the May Presbytery meeting yesterday at Knox Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis.  We arrived almost a hour early as we wanted to set up our table and show a recent video that we’ve made about the Chain of Lakes Outreach ministry.  We’ve discovered that we have quite a lot of talent in our new church at making videos—we’re made three new ones this month—and we wanted to share this with the Presbytery.

 

My favorite time of Presbytery meetings is talking to people.  Val and I had a blast talking with people about what is happening at Chain of Lakes while the video ran at our table.

 

We came into the meeting as David Grachek, new pastor at Knox Presbyterian Church, spoke about their ministry.  Their church is also doing “Sundaes on Wednesday” during the summer.  Their congregation seems excited about the new ministries in their midst.

 

One theme of the meeting was thanking the outgoing Moderator, Barbara Lutter.  She did a terrific job this past year of leading our meetings with a listening and compassionate presence while being fair to all.

 

I enjoyed listening to the report from Mission Worker Kurt Lee.  He shared that as part of his work in Korea he now has to raise money to support his ministry.  The amounts seemed daunting.  However his energy was refreshing. 

 

The Presbytery plowed through some important work regarding dismissal of congregations and teaching elders to other denominations.  The Presbytery approved a set of recommendations presented by Margaret Thomas which shared seven recommendations, one which permitted teaching elders and entire congregations to move to the Presbyterian Church in America, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.  Such movement, of course, can only happen after Administrative Commissions appointed by the Presbytery have done their work.  Two Administrative Commissions are already at work—for the Presbyterian churches in Eden Prairie and Richfield.  Last night the Presbytery appointed another Administrative Commission for Christ Presbyterian in Edina. 

 

I was very pleased that the Church Development Team was able to share a breakout session called New Churches, New Ministries.  I joined Walter Chuquimia, Daniel Vigilante and Bev Modlin in sharing a presentation.  Walter and I talked about our new churches while Daniel and Bev talked about a new ministry in their congregations.

 

As part of my presentation I encouraged churches to support Chain of Lakes in our Sundaes on Wednesday ministry this summer.  Chain of Lakes is worshipping on Wednesdays at Northpoint Elementary School.  We’re asking different Presbyterian churches to be sponsors.  The church would pay $250 to be a sponsor and then could share their ministry with the people of our new church during worship.  This is an outstanding way to build connections between churches in the Presbytery and Chain of Lakes.  We have four churches who have already pledged to be a sponsor.  We anticipate that six more will help.  People interested in having their congregations sponsor Sundaes on Wednesday can E-mail me at: pastor@colpres.org.

 

After dinner I kibitzed with my good friends at Community in Plainview.  After the Presbytery elected officers and people to committees, Val and I left.  I was sorry to miss worship and the installation of officers.  My day had started at 6:20 a.m. on my bike as part of my Triathlon training.  I needed to get home to see my favorite red heads.