Hello Church,
Greetings from the FGCC Transition Team. You’re probably wondering who we are and what we’re doing. That’s a fair question – we’ve asked those things ourselves. You might also be asking why all this talk about transition right now – can’t we just hire a permanent Lead Pastor and move on? Also, a fair question.
Our goal as a team is to assist our Transition Lead Pastor, Reg Toews, in ministry and mission to our church. That mission is, in short, to leave us prepared and healthy spiritually, communally, and organizationally for our next Lead Pastor hire.
There is still some grieving to do as a church family. For many in the FGCC community, we lost a talented and beloved leader from our church. It’s important to take the time to recognize this hole that was left. We’ve done some of that work already, but inevitably we’ll go through periods of time where we feel a little lost and wishing for the “good ole days” before things started changing. Our hope and prayer is that, with the LORD’s guidance, we can come out the other side of this transition stronger, closer as a community, and with a clarified biblical vision enabling us to identify and invite our next Lead Pastor to come serve and lead well with us.
We believe there’s some questions we need to ask as a church right now. Some of those are:
- How do our current values line up with our mission as a church, and where might we need to re-evaluate what we place emphasis on?
- Is our current organizational structure working? Is it the best option moving forward? Are all our sites served well by the way we currently do things?
- How do we respond and do mission as a church in our current cultural landscape? Where do we place our authority when it comes to answering tough questions about what we believe?
- How do we support our staff well right now and enable them to guide us through this time?
There’s more we’ll need to address over the next year, but these are an example of some of the things Reg is helping us navigate right now. As a team, we’ll be reaching out to you as a church body to be involved in this conversation as much as we possibly can. Over the next year we’ll be having a series of meetings (or conversations) where we want to invite everyone in on this transition journey. We believe in the value of taking time to evaluate and process these things. We’re very thankful for the ministry of Reg, and his wife, Brenda, to our church and are excited to work alongside them on behalf of you, our church family, in this process.
Our first step is to go over the results of our church health survey and see what we can discover about the current state of our church. Even if you didn’t have a chance to fill out the survey, there’s a lot of encouraging and challenging information we’ll see to inspire conversation. We want to invite you to come share a meal together as a church family and discuss the results of this survey together on April 30, at 8:30am. We’ll eat pancakes, review the results, and discuss together what this means for the future of our church. If you cannot make it in-person, there will be an online option as well.
We also invite you to pray and spend time in the Bible along with us. Pray for our church, for our leadership, and for us as a team as we work together with Reg through this transition.
Blessings,
FGCC Transition Team – Gil Klassen (Council), Clark Caldwell, Lance Brown, Jonathan Friesen, Ashlynn Reimer, Donna Vollet, Vi Petkau, Kevin Wiens (Staff), Reg & Brenda Toews.