Hello friends! I am Pastor Masters
Pastor's Message
Dear Siloa and Salem friends,
My first month with you has gone well. I am grateful that I have had this soft landing time to get settled in. I'm starting to recognize faces and am slowly getting there with names. Thank you again for your kind patience while I learn.
Early in February, I will meet with the church councils from both Salem and Siloa. I will lay out for them a proposed transition schedule that will take us through the winter and spring. With both councils' input, I will form transition teams (one from each congregation) to help me collect data about a number of things including (but not limited to) members' opinions about how things are going at your church, membership and financial trends over the past 20 years, and demographic information about the local community. All this and other information will then be summarized into reports and presented to each congregation, hopefully by late spring. These transition reports will help to shape the combined written Ministry Site Profile (MSP), which is Siloa and Salem's collective résumé/job description of sorts that will be posted on a national ELCA website for potential pastoral candidates to view.
This is a very broad and general description of what we will be doing over the next few months at Siloa and Salem. Along the way, I will communicate with you what we are doing and how you can participate. As I said in my first sermon with you, your voice counts! I want to hear from you, and I hope you will participate in various opportunities along the way. The most important thing each one of you can do, of course, is to hold both Siloa and Salem close in prayer, especially your leadership teams, as they lead during this time of change.
My office hours for Salem and Siloa are Sundays through Wednesdays. (I do private consulting work Thursdays through Saturdays.)
My phone number is 612-327-7454. My preference is not to receive texts at this number, except in cases of emergency. Email is the best way to contact me, and that address is pastorsusanmasters@gmail.com (not pastorsusan57@gmail.com-please disregard that email address and do not use it.)
I apologize if this all sounds a bit fussy. Because I do other work besides at Salem and Siloa, I want to be sure to receive your non-emergency calls and emails in a way that won't get lost or overlooked. Thank you for your kind understanding. (And of course, in emergencies, all bets are off! Call, text, email, send carrier pigeons-whatever you need to do to get my attention!)
As in all things, please do not hesitate to let me know your questions or concerns. And your ideas!
Peace,Transition Pastor Susan Masters612-327-7454 pastorsusanmasters@gmail.com
My first month with you has gone well. I am grateful that I have had this soft landing time to get settled in. I'm starting to recognize faces and am slowly getting there with names. Thank you again for your kind patience while I learn.
Early in February, I will meet with the church councils from both Salem and Siloa. I will lay out for them a proposed transition schedule that will take us through the winter and spring. With both councils' input, I will form transition teams (one from each congregation) to help me collect data about a number of things including (but not limited to) members' opinions about how things are going at your church, membership and financial trends over the past 20 years, and demographic information about the local community. All this and other information will then be summarized into reports and presented to each congregation, hopefully by late spring. These transition reports will help to shape the combined written Ministry Site Profile (MSP), which is Siloa and Salem's collective résumé/job description of sorts that will be posted on a national ELCA website for potential pastoral candidates to view.
This is a very broad and general description of what we will be doing over the next few months at Siloa and Salem. Along the way, I will communicate with you what we are doing and how you can participate. As I said in my first sermon with you, your voice counts! I want to hear from you, and I hope you will participate in various opportunities along the way. The most important thing each one of you can do, of course, is to hold both Siloa and Salem close in prayer, especially your leadership teams, as they lead during this time of change.
My office hours for Salem and Siloa are Sundays through Wednesdays. (I do private consulting work Thursdays through Saturdays.)
My phone number is 612-327-7454. My preference is not to receive texts at this number, except in cases of emergency. Email is the best way to contact me, and that address is pastorsusanmasters@gmail.com (not pastorsusan57@gmail.com-please disregard that email address and do not use it.)
I apologize if this all sounds a bit fussy. Because I do other work besides at Salem and Siloa, I want to be sure to receive your non-emergency calls and emails in a way that won't get lost or overlooked. Thank you for your kind understanding. (And of course, in emergencies, all bets are off! Call, text, email, send carrier pigeons-whatever you need to do to get my attention!)
As in all things, please do not hesitate to let me know your questions or concerns. And your ideas!
Peace,Transition Pastor Susan Masters612-327-7454 pastorsusanmasters@gmail.com