From Pastor Mike:
I’m baaaaaaaack!
Whether you’re excited or depressed by this, it is what it is so deal with it! 
If you’ve read the newsletter this summer, you’ve seen the article about the Doldrums that I wrote before leaving for my sabbatical. If you read that article, and I hope you did, you know that I sense that PCC is in the midst of a Doldrum. We’re stable for the moment, but we don’t have a clear sense of direction to work toward. If we stay in this stable state, we will find ourselves gradually and unnoticeably declining much like the two churches from which we came, Bethlehem Covenant and First Baptist. And when that happens, it is extremely difficult to recover. I’m sure all of us can relate to this in terms of our physical bodies as we age.
In order to prevent this, the church Council has agreed to participate in a process that is designed to help churches pursue health and mission. That process is called the Vitality Pathway. There are three work-shops that are part of the Vitality Pathway. The first of which is called Veritas – telling the truth about the condition of your church. The catchphrase with the Veritas workshop is that “there is no vitality without reality.” You can’t change and grow and become healthy without honestly accessing your present condition. One of the great things about this is that it’s a tried and true process, and we won’t be going it alone but will have the help of a coach from the conference who will come onsite with us.
This workshop is scheduled for our church on Saturday, October 28th. It will probably be from 9am-3pm, but the exact time hasn’t been set yet. This workshop won’t be of benefit to us unless the majority of the congregation (whether you’re an official member or an attendee) participates. So I’m asking all of you to make time on that day to attend this workshop.
We’ll be talking more about this in September during announcements in worship, but if you have questions that aren’t answered there, please contact me so I can address them.
In addition to this, we will be recruiting a team of people from the church to guide us through this entire process. They will be the Vitality Team. This is your official invitation to be part of this team that will help us discern God’s purpose for us as a whole body and to help establish the steps we take toward that discerned purpose. We need 8 people for this team. Each person on the team will have an assigned responsibility. I had asked you to consider this back in June. If I or someone from the church council asks you to participate on this team, please strongly consider it. This will probably be a year and a half to a two-year commitment as we move through the Vitality Pathway, but it will be an opportunity to greatly influence whether PCC grows or slips into irrelevancy.
Again, please contact me if you have questions and or interest in being on the Vitality Team.
In Christ,
Pastor Mike