Week of the Second Sunday in Lent
Midweek Lenten Series:
Our Midweek Lenten Program via Zoom continues this coming Wednesday, March 16 at 7:00 pm with a brief service of the word featuring readings from the daily lectionary which complement our Sunday readings. Following worship, Pastor Wally Jensen will offer reflections and engage in conversation with you on how global travels and work have expanded his views of both Christianity and the church.
A Zoom link for this service will be sent out via Constant Contact. If you do not currently receive our Constant Contact messages but wish to do so, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The worship bulletin is also available here:
Lenten Midweek Worship Bulletin for March 16, 2022
Finally, here are the other Resurrection members who will offer their reflections for the remaining Wednesdays in Lent: Norm Olsen on March 23; Gordon Lathrop on March 30; and Mimi VanPoole on April 6. Many thanks to them for their willingness to hold forth.
“Council Approves Moving Forward with The Village School”
Dear Friends in Christ:
At the regularly scheduled meeting on March 10, our Congregation Council voted unanimously to enter into a rental relationship with The Village School according to provisions listed on a term sheet (most of the provisions of which were shared with you on the information document I recently made available to the congregation). The term sheet, developed by our church rental working group, and approved by both our Council and the School, will serve as the basis for a legal lease document that will soon be drafted, ultimately to be approved also by our Council and the School.
In further conversations between our congregation and leaders of The Village School, it became clear that the School would benefit from the occasional use of our parish hall (perhaps a couple of times a week) and that our leaders believe it only makes sense for the school to use our hall occasionally, given its fine amenities. Because this arrangement increases the amount of rentable square footage, the rate of rent that the School pays will increase by $500 per month for a total annual rent of $126,000 rather than the previously stated $120,000. Another change to the proposal is that our congregation will retain exclusive use of the room on the second floor, next to the Choir Room, which is used for our Social Ministry purposes, especially our quilters. Other than these two substantial changes, the agreement is basically the same as what was outlined in the information sheet I had made available to you all.
In addition to our seeing to the draft of a lease, to be undertaken by an attorney’s office with whom we’ll contract, Resurrection Church will in the coming weeks mobilize a working group to oversee the removal and disposition of items in the rooms that the School will have dedicated and shared use of. This will be a major undertaking which will require many hands on deck for assistance. Please be at the ready to help out! And again, this work of cleaning out rooms and finding homes for unused items is a task many have long talked about, even before the school possibility presented itself.
Over the course of late spring and early summer (on a timetable soon to be worked out), The Village School will oversee the cosmetic redecoration of spaces available to them as well as a major overhaul of the outdoor playground to accommodate students of all elementary school ages. Then a new school year will commence in late August.
This is a major shift in the life of our congregation, which has stirred our pots, I believe, in very salutary ways. The rental income will be enormously helpful in addressing our shortfalls in giving. We’ve been running about a $5,000 deficit per month in recent months, so we clearly need the income if we are to maintain and meet our current budget. Additionally, the School will give our congregation greater visibility in the community, which can prove to be beneficial to our desire for membership and programmatic growth. And this relationship with The Village School makes for good stewardship of the gift of our fine building.
The Council’s discernment conversations and deliberation toward this decision were greatly aided by the two occasions the whole congregation had to discuss this possibility and raise questions and concerns and to hear from representatives of The Village School itself. Likewise, several have shared particular issues and concerns with me that I have passed along to our church rental working group and to the Council, along with further responses from the School concerning issues raised. Thousand thanks to all who have taken this proposal seriously enough to think through implications of this relationship and to share views, questions, and concerns. I believe that we have attended to all of this with great care. And The Village School has been very responsive to our concerns and flexible in their dealings with our congregation’s leaders.
There are many more details to attend to in the coming weeks and months. Please pray for this new relationship to move forward smoothly without undue complications. And thanks in advance for your patience with living into a reality which is very new to us and our life together.
May God in Christ bless this endeavor according to the divine will and for the flourishing of both Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church and The Village School.
With such prayer even now in Jesus’ name,
Pastor Jonathan Linman