From the Rector
This Easter season, St. Martin's is working on two very exciting pieces of our future. The first is that today we have begun initial conversations with potential youth ministers. Hopefully, out of this pool of initial candidates, we will find the person for whom we have been praying. The Mary and Mac Clark Youth Education Fund (or the Clark Fund) is a blessing to St. Martin's. It has given us the ability to do a national search for a youth minister. We have a diverse pool of initial candidates. As we move forward with this process, I ask that you continue to pray for the children and youth of our parish. Finding the right person to help us in this ministry is one of the ways we live into the "we will" promises that we have said at every baptism and every confirmation St. Martin's has ever celebrated. I will be at the parish's Family Fun Day this Saturday. If you have questions about this search, I hope we can have a conversation about it then.
The second exciting thing we have made great progress on is the St. Martin's Preschool. I personally want to thank Robert Dozier, Pam Hair, Becky Lumpkin, Michelle McDonnell, Anita Nelam and Allison Askins. This committee has worked very hard. The process for DSS licensure has begun and has gone surprisingly smoothly (please knock on wood here), thanks to the building's design. A link to the job description for our preschool director is on our web page at smifsc.com/preschool-director. Allison Askins is our staff contact person for this. If you know someone who may be interested in this job, please pass along our information.
On Tuesday, at the Finance Committee meeting, I said thank you to our committee members and vestry, both the current committee and the previous one from last year. For outdoor and online worship, the committee made commitments to purchase outdoor heaters, a keyboard, a PA system and video camera equipment as well as expenses for the rental tent. They were decisions made with the understanding that COVID was going to be a part of our long-term story whether we liked it or not. Easter was a success with new families beginning to come to church. These were, as Caitlyn said in a sermon a few weeks ago, "the first buds of spring."
As we continue to emerge from pandemic time, the hiring of a new youth minister and preschool director represent not only a continued return to normalcy, but also new possibilities. Both are exciting and worthy of celebration.
In Christ,
Mitch+