December Note
From Pastor Ryan
SOTP: We not only know how to worship together, we know how to play together too!
You’ve likely heard by now that Wednesday Night Dinners are back at Shepherd of the Prairie! As of the writing of this, we have had our first dinner and we are off to a great start! More than 40-45 people of all ages came together around tables with salad and pasta. We had fantastic conversation, laughter, and excitement. The dinners run from 5:45-6:45pm. To support the ministry and help the volunteers who are preparing the food, we are asking for a suggested donation of $4 per person.
Kids Connect Rebuild!
For some time now, our Children, Youth, and Family Ministry Team has been working to address the struggles we have had in recruiting and keeping volunteers for our Kids Connect program. We planned to designate our entire October Ministry Night meeting to develop a plan to remedy our struggles. I introduced the team to a diagnostic tool that helps leaders identify when there is a not-so-obvious, underlying challenge.
To make a long story short, after we used the tool to discuss our concern over lack of volunteers, we began to realize that it was more than the volunteerism that we needed to address. We discerned that our Kids Connect program needs a complete overhaul. For one example, our program is currently driven by the curriculum we’ve been using, but we have received some feedback that curriculum is not meeting the needs of our volunteer leaders and is really geared toward a program much bigger than ours with more resources.
The rebuilding process will officially begin on December 8 at 10:15am. In between worship services on that Sunday, we invite anyone and everyone from SOTP who has any ideas, dreams, desires, or general feedback related to our children’s faith formation program to join us for a roundtable discussion in the Fellowship Hall. Jill, the team, and I have been working hard to develop some questions to guide our conversation and we also plan to distribute some surveys. We want to find out what our families need and want when it comes to forming the faith of the children of SOTP.
I am also diligently working on developing a document that outlines the foundational purposes, values, and goals as they relate to the faith and spiritual formation of our programs. From that foundation we will create a whole new program, seek out a curriculum or curricula that work for us, and work out the technical details that will make our program as effective as possible.
Your feedback is very important to this process. Please plan to attend the roundtable. If your schedule won’t allow it, please reach out to me to receive a copy of the survey we will be distributing. We would like as many responses as possible. This process will have a major effect on the future of children’s programming at SOTP and we want to make sure we have the needs and wishes of our families at the forefront of any decisions we make.
Thank you for the incredible ways you serve our amazing faith community! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Year’s celebration!
May the peace of the Lord be with you always,
Pastor Ryan
Email Pastor Ryan: pastorryan@sotpmail.com