Conklin-Broad Avenue-North News

January Newsletter                         

Dear friends,

I was recently told that Rick Warren (Purpose Driven Life author) said that he always thought of life as a series of peaks and valleys. You go through your ups and downs. But he has changed his thinking to see that life is really more like a railroad with the two rails side by side of joys and concerns. I believe he may be absolutely right. And I believe that is absolutely true for congregations as well.

We are in the midst of one of those times right now where the good and bad are running concurrently. I just found out that we lost our arbitration hearing. While the judge did not side completely with Chiannis and Anderson in their suit against us, he none the less is requiring us to pay them $21,000.00 plus interest at the usual rate of 18% interest! It is a far cry from the $56,000.00 which C&A said we owed them but it is still quite a devastating blow to us on top of lawyers fees and court costs. We are seeking help from the Presbytery to get us through this and hope to have this resolved in some form by the time you are reading this. This was not an action we took. Chiannis and Anderson sued us. We had no choice but to defend ourselves. We had extremely competent legal advice from Al Millus of Hinman, Howard and Kattell.  Our lawyer is as upset by the judge’s decision as we are. We are grateful for his hard work and compassion.

One of the disconcerting aspects of this is the fact that I was going to report to you that we had two outstanding months with the Building Fund and I feel strongly that we are pulling ourselves out of that hole. Your generosity has been uplifting! I am grateful for the work of the Building Fund Team for their efforts at raising the awareness of the congregation for all of us to do our part to maintain our faithful payments on the mortgage. My thanks to each of them and to each of you who have rallied your support for this fund. Keep up the good work!

Joys do abound side by side with the concerns that are weighing upon your leadership. Starting the second Sunday of January we will be offering another worship opportunity in the Chapel of the Conklin building. We call it, “Second Sunday Celebration” and it will be a time of informal, casual worship with an upbeat contemporary feel to it.  Steve Chastain, Jack Wise and I will be the leadership team. Once a month, it will run during the “Sunday School Hour” of 9:30 a.m. and will involve the Sunday School program as part of its program. This is an excellent opportunity for those who enjoy worshipping with a contemporary style of music. It is also an opportunity for you to invite those who are less comfortable with a traditional worship service to come and be a part of our ministry here.

Another great opportunity is the upcoming Financial Peace University program which begins in February. Dave Ramsey is a wonderful Christian financial counselor who has developed this program to help us to understand how to live within our means and to use our resources as ones guided by our Faith. This program has been used extremely successfully in a lot of churches and the colleagues I have talked to have been effusive in their praise of this video seminar. More information on both of these new programs will be available, or just give me a call and I’ll be happy to tell you more.

I do want to share with you a concern we broached at the last meeting of the BAN Chapel Committee. Their numbers have been hurt by the loss of beloved members. Their finances are a struggle. Please keep the good and faithful people of our Chapel in your prayers as difficult challenges lie before us.

So you can see why I believe Rick Warren is correct, the good and the bad go along side by side. We seek God’s guidance and blessing in the difficulties and we seek to praise God in the blessings we have received. I wish I could tell you what the new year was going to bring. I do know that it will be a mixture of good and bad. And I absolutely know that our Loving and Gracious God will be with us every step along the way.

With much love in Christ,