Dear Trinity friends,
A part of Trinity’s strategic 5-year plan is to “streamline congregational structure.” We have had a ministry team meeting for the last 2 years working on this plan, and we’re ready to launch it!
Trinity has had the same congregational structure for the past 27 years, and while it has served us well, as the world and the church have changed, we believe that it’s time to make some changes in our structure that will allow us to be more responsive to the needs and ideas of our community, and to involve more people in Trinity’s leadership.
Currently, our congregational council oversees a structure with eleven standing “commissions.” These are: Caregiving, Faith Formation, Family Ministry, Finance, Outreach, Personnel, Properties, Stewardship, Worship, Music & the Arts, Youth Education and Youth Ministry.
In our new structure, the four commissions that deal with congregational governance and infrastructure, Finance, Personnel, Properties and Stewardship will remain as commissions, accountable to the congregational council. All of the other commissions will become “Ministry Teams.”
There are two primary differences between ministry teams and commissions:
- A ministry team’s primary task will be to create and empower “sub-teams” of people to work in specific ministry tasks. For example, the Worship, Music and Arts Team might create four sub-teams, one for contemporary worship, one for traditional, one for visual arts and one for concerts. Then each of these teams might create sub-teams to work on particular projects. The length of all of these teams and sub-teams will vary based on need, and we will recruit people to these teams for their gifts and passion. We hope this way, many more people can get involved.
- Ministry teams will not be directly accountable to the council. Rather, each will have a staff person assigned to them whose job is to ensure that the teams are functioning, and that their ministry is growing. The staff members are accountable to the council through the senior pastor, who oversees all the ministry activities.
Our hope is that our new structure will make us more nimble in our decision making, and will create space for many more people to become involved.
While the congregational council has unanimously approved these changes, and has authorized us to begin moving in this direction, it will require a congregational meeting and vote because it involves editing our bylaws.
We’ve created a 10 minute video that further explains these changes that you can view at the top of this page, or by going to www.tlcowatonna.org/vision.
Trinity will hold a special congregational meeting on Sunday, July 12 at 11:45am, after worship, to vote on these changes (in addition to voting on calling Pastor Amanda Weinkauf as our new associate pastor). We hope you can make it to this important meeting. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Blessings!
Pastor Todd
Test Driving Theology 