BEING INVOLVED

I'm off to the Yellowhead Presbytery (Interim) Executive meeting this morning.  This is expected to be the 'last' meeting of the executive of YHP.  Last week (weak), I agreed to become the new chair of the Presbytery Operating Team, which will in some ways is the replacement for the Executive.  You see, the Presbytery has changed the way we will govern ourselves.  We will spend less time as a whole body of 50-70 congregational reps and clergy making the routine and day to day decisions of Presbytery.  Actually, it almost always was basically a rubber stamp process as the real work of deciding what to do was done by the smaller committee who looked at all of the factors and possibilities and came to the full Presbytery for approval.  The new Operations team, which I guess I am chairing, is charged with making these routine decisions within the policies and mission statements of the Presbytery.  This will free up time for the whole body to focus on learning and spirituality and policy setting and visioning.

I haven't even chaired my first operations team meeting, and I've already been connected to two other groups (the executive today and the Presbytery Council - which as Operations Chair, I am also a member of).  It goes like that sometimes: you say yes once, and it makes more than one connection.

Sure it's an extra meeting or two, but what a wonderful metaphor for the church: we have our one point of entry (whatever it was that first drew us in) and we find that we then are more and more connected by others who have been drawn in as well.  Thanks be to God.