President's Message

by John Porter, MPUUC President - July 2008 to June 2009

It’s a humbling experience for me to be elected President of Mission Peak, particularly after the past year following around Karin Lin, President for 2007-8. Her energy and dedication to the congregation seem boundless. In fact, everyone on the Board has been terrific to work with, always willing to step up when needed. We all owe them our thanks. I hope you take a moment when you see them to express your appreciation – Karin Lin, Beth Schaefer, Jack Mulcahy, Lorna Jaynes, Jen King and Karen Sindelar.

The new Board includes me, President-Elect Jack Mulcahy, Secretary Michealle Havenhill, Treasurer T.J. Jaramillo, and Trustees-at-Large Jen King, Allysson McDonald, and Lorna Jaynes. Please give them your support.

We’re in the midst of change. Sally Ahnger, our Director of Religious Education (DRE) for more than 5 years has retired. Chris Schriner’s retirement is coming up on August 31. And we’ve had to drop our administrator, Barbara Pendergrass, for budgetary reasons. Our new DRE, Kevin Drewery, will start in August and our new Interim Minister, the Rev. Joy Atkinson, will begin serving on September 1. These two are both experienced religious professionals and I look forward to their leadership.

Several challenges confront us. The budget adopted at the annual meeting has a deficit of about $6,000 and requires us to do without paid administrative help. So we will need volunteers to prepare the Sunday Order of Service, pick up the mail, and mail the newsletter. Placed in context, the shortfall of about $6,000 is about 4 ½ percent of pledged income. With the average pledge per member of about $1,100, that’s about $50 per member. So if each of us put an extra dollar in the plate each Sunday we would cover the deficit. If each of us added $2 to the plate each Sunday, we would have enough to hire administrative help to cover our clerical needs.

Of course only half of us are there on a typical Sunday so that makes it a bit more complicated. Here’s another way. In a pulpitorial on March 16 Graham Bell talked about the Economic Stimulus payments that many of us are receiving this month. Most of us can expect a check for $600 for 1 person and $1,200 for two. Graham said, in part, “I am going to make an unreasonable request of you . . . I want you to give that money to Mission Peak, and not spend it at the gas pump, Starbucks or Kohl’s department store.” So the math is pretty simple; 10 of those $600 payments will cover the deficit and another 10 will let us pay for the clerical help we need.

Jackie and I have discussed this and decided to follow Graham’s advice. If you’d also like to support Mission Peak in this way, you can simply endorse your Economic Stimulus check and put it in the offering on Sunday morning, or write a check and note “2008-9 ESP” on the memo line. (“ESP” stands for Economic Stimulus Payment; that’s what it will do for the Mission Peak budget for 2008-9!)

We face another challenge this year as well. Our rental agreement with the First United Methodist Church (FUMC) runs for 2 years and needs to be renewed on July 1, 2009, at the end of this fiscal year. The Methodist Campus has proved to be a wonderful place for us to meet, and cooperative ventures with the Methodist congregation have been rewarding. So my goal is to have a new agreement in place no later than January 1. That means we need to begin talking to our friends at FUMC in the fall. It is my hope that we can obtain an agreement for a longer term – perhaps for 5 years – so that we can have a bit more stability. We are presently talking to folks from FUMC about obtaining office space for our interim minister.

Our third major challenge for the year is to perform our interim tasks of letting go of the past and preparing for the future, with the help of our new interim minister.

Finally, in the spring the search for a new settled minister will begin, aimed at having him or her on Board by 2010.

I care deeply about our shared convictions: to treat everyone as brothers and sisters, to care for our home, the earth, and to live lives of goodness and love. Acting together we can meet these challenges and more. So here’s to another memorable year at Mission Peak!

John

Back to Top

Last updated 6-29-2008