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A message from Pastor Chris
God has truly blessed us this past year as God always does. Some of those blessings have come with difficult decisions and changes that were hard to make. After 10 years of gifted service, Cara Ann transitioned out of her position here and entered a time to focus on family and her seminary education. Cara Ann’s influence in our church family has been a true gift and will continue to be part of who we are as a congregation and as servants of Christ in this community. Cara Ann’s shepherding of the college program has given our church the opportunity to establish a wonderful and continuing relationship with college ministry entities and to interact with students, uniquely, through our corner hot dog stands and daytime coffee stands during exams. With Cara Ann’s departure came the opportunity for the church to envision its future and look at staffing to help fulfill that vision. As you know we did not have to go far to find the right person(s). Sarah Scardino, who is an Elder in our church and a very gifted leader is now working with our youth and co-ministering with Emilia Modrusan with the Sunday school children. Emilia is an Education major at SDSU and has been a member of FPC for several years. We are truly blessed to have such a great ministry team. The college ministry has continued to thrive under the leadership of the College Ministry Committee, though we were devastated to lose Fran Cass who was a primary mover and shaker within the ministry with Al. We miss them dearly and struggle to be as effective. Our Sunday night worship, Beacon, was a great blessing as we built a very tight knit group that grew in our relationship with Jesus and each other. We look forward to continuing our relationship with SDSU and building our youth and children’s ministry.
We continued to provide worship, education, mission and fellowship opportunities while focusing more and more on our community. A small group was formed to learn how to make the transition from a church focused within our facilities to a church focused beyond our property. This group is still meeting and having conversations about encouraging people to see that what we do each day is a sacred calling and that God desires each of us to use our gifts for the flourishing of our community. We still support many long term missions and ministries that reach out to the homeless and underrepresented. We have joined a couple of Habitat for Humanity projects and provided meals for Interfaith Services. We are grateful for all the opportunities that God makes available to us.
We have said goodbye to some of our saints: Fred Attinger, Fran Cass, Maxine Vaughn, Bob Comer and Ellie Glason. We miss them deeply, but know they have received the blessings of resurrection life. We have also been blessed by those who have joined our church and are a gift: Paulette Johnson, Margarita Lillie, Carol Portillo and Mary Elva Smith. We look forward to a new year of growing in our understanding of God and how we live out our relationship with God, others and ourselves.
We have continued to support our Presbytery, Synod and General Assembly by participating in areas of governance, participation in task groups and commissions and working with committees. Elder Jack Shelver has been the Presbytery Vice-Moderator this year and will be Moderator of the Presbytery in 2016 – please keep him in your prayers as he serves and encourage him in this important work. We look forward with great anticipation to what God is going to do in our midst in the years to come. Thank you for the privilege of serving as your pastor and Martha and I are so grateful to have a spiritual home amongst you.
Shalom,
Chris Lenocker
