May God bless you and grant you his peace.  We are well into the fall and Thanksgiving is fast approaching.

I have to laugh as I remember a recent radio commercial featuring The Red Avenger, a rather hapless super hero.  In one commercial the Red Avenger tries to turn back time but instead advances time.  He realizes his mistake when he calls to an old man who, in a creaky voice says, “I was young just a minute ago.”  I feel that way myself when I look at how quickly time passes.  June through October has passed like a blur.

We have been, and we are still, busy.  The Stephen Ministries leadership training Terri and I received in June is being put to use as we are training 10 people to become Stephen Ministers.  We meet with two small groups on Sunday night and Wednesday night for a weekly training session which will last until February.

I’ve also asked the church council to allow me to assemble a Dream Team of a dozen church members to serve in a long-range strategic planning team.  We’ll be meeting soon to begin work on that process and will report to the church and the council as we formulate recommendations for the council to consider.

I also want to report on a recent Congregational Survey I submitted to you on Homecoming Sunday.  We received only 17 surveys out of an attendance of 186.  While the sample is insufficient to offer a real sense of the congregation’s beliefs, it does offer some suggestions that I present for the sake of conversation.

I asked several questions that required answers on a 1-5 scale.  There were no surprises in those scores with all but one being between 4-5 indicating an “agree or strongly agree” with each statement.  The only statement that received less was the statement: This church is just the right size; I wouldn’t change anything.  That statement received an average score of 2.64 or almost 3 (disagree or neutral).  The scores ranged ran the full gamut between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree).  We’ll have to revisit that question another time.

In addition, I asked several open- ended questions, some of which I have listed below along with their answers.