As many of you know, one of our elders, Gary Haverdink is also a volunteer staff member at our church. His title is “Director of Ministries and Operations.” Gary uses his leadership gifts to organize the volunteer ministries here and he helps make sure that the church, as an organization, runs smoothly. To be honest, without him, we wouldn’t have as many good community groups as we have now, we would probably be lacking for volunteers, and our drinking water might be hazardous to our health (yes, among other things, Gary makes sure we always have a up-to date water testing and permitting.) I am very grateful that God has blessed us with him, to do lots of things that I don’t do or don’t do well.

We think it’s time to do that again with another person. Our other elder, Bruce Hawk is a godly man who knows his Bible well and has a heart to care for people. This is great, because as the church has grown, I have been feeling the increased pressure of having lots of people to meet with, counsel, help, and care about.

Now, in general, the way that we take care of these kinds of situations is through our community groups. That is, I don’t feel pressure to have to “be there” for all of you because many of you are involved with a group of people who you are looking out for, and who are looking out for you. But still, there are times when there are special circumstances, or someone asks for “pastor” kind of help outside of their community group, or someone hasn’t joined a group yet (shame on them :) ...just kidding. Sort of.)

Anyway, for that reason, I am happy to announce that Bruce Hawk will be our new Director of Congregational Care. This means, that he will be taking some of the load off of me. It also means that some of you may ask to meet with me for something (ex: “Mario, we just got engaged, will you do some premarital counseling with us?”) and I might say to you, “Bruce Hawk would be happy to help you with that!”

To be honest, he’s probably the better choice for this kind of thing anyway. There has been at least one time when I counseled a couple and one of them left angry at me. So, it’s possible that I’m not even good at some of this stuff and that this should have happened a long time ago.

Anyway, let’s rejoice that God graces different people with different gifts, and that Bruce is willing to take on this new role!