Dear John and Plan 9

Some of you remember my "Dear John" post about the letter I got in which things were made clear that something was up.

I won't go into all the nitty-gritty details, but I can now say enough about stuff to make things more clear for my adoring reading public (okay ... stop snickering).

First, the Dear John Letter:

I am in a mission congregation (congregationS, actually, since I have two of them). That means that we receive financial support from the Diocese. For the past several years, because of the poor financial situation of the Diocese, we have been receiving less and less aid over the years. For the past two years, I have had to make a special request from the diocese as to why we need financial support, how much we need, and what we're going to do with that money (in short, we use it to pay my salary).

I again requested funds this year, and that request was approved; however, it was made very clear to me that this will be the last year we can request funds. In other words, we need to be financially solvent in a year. If we can't do that, I will not be able to draw a salary.

So, in short, this just might be my last year in this place.

Now, Plan 9:

I've been thinking about this for some time now. VC parish has been holding steady with an ASA of 10 or 11.

CC parish has been growing steadily and our ASA is probably now in the upper 20's. CC is also in the town with the most growth potential. We now host an ecumenical Youth Group. We are reaching out into the community in a variety of ways. We've just put a new walkway in for our elderly population. And we hosted the combined service for the bishop's visitation where we had 48 in attendance.

Plan 9, in short, is to merge the congregations into one, use our combined resources to more effectively minister to the people of the Valley, sell the VC building and put the proceeds into an endowment or some other fund that we can draw on while continuing to grow.

Wow ... lots of hard decisions to be made in the near future. It'll be an interesting year.