2 December 2007--Charge Conference IMAGINING STOCKWELL

Pastor's State of the Church

Grace and Peace to you from our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is a blessing to serve with you in ministry.

Five and a half months ago the moving van landed with our earthly possessions on your doorstep. Little did we realize what was in store for us. Yet, I can say that truly, God is good - all the time!

When I think about our ministry together the words faithful, committed, hopeful and blessed come to mind. God truly has blessed us. Stockwell is a warm, caring church family seeking to carry out Christ's work and mission in this community.

We consist of close to 200 members. Our average attendance is in the 140 plus range and Sunday school attendance is in the 50's currently.

I want to express my appreciation to our paid staff here at Stockwell who are working alongside of me and have helped in the acclimation process. So, I say thank you to Margaret Woody, our
church secretary; to Coy Lane, who is our custodian; and to Mark Miller, who is our assistant pastor.

There are some short term goals that I have been seeking to deal with in those early days of ministry here.

It has obviously been my goal to get to know the people and the ministries of this church. To that end, we are planning a series of meet the pastor and spouse nights - group meeting for members and attenders - in several homes on Sunday evenings during the months of January and February. Currently, four nights are planned, with the possibility of adding more. These meetings will be a good opportunity for fellowship and information gathering. These are being sponsored by the Pastor/Staff Relations Committee.

A second short term goal is to get a number of systems in place that will allow us to work toward effective ministry together (Effective Minstry Systems--EMS). One of those is to strengthen our record keeping through updating our file system. Another is to strengthen our record keeping concerning first time visitors to worship and our follow-up to them. A final one I
would mention is to have functioning committees with an adequate number of members to carry out their work. A real effort has been made through the Lay Leadership Committee to fill committees with persons gifted in that particular area.

A third goal for 2008 would be to enlist as many attenders and membvers as possible in reading the Bible through in 2008; and to continue to develop the discipline of prayer, intercessory prayer, for the needs of the Stockwell community, our state, nation, world, our Annual Conference, and our own Stockwell family. One of the things I am excited about is the recent formation of a Vision Committee that will work alongside our Building Committee to evaluate our ministries, and envision what Stockwell UMC might look like in five years and ten years.

State of the church report given by Pastor Jim Fookes at the annual Stockwell United Methodist Church Charge Conference on Sunday, December 2, 2007, at 3:00 P.M.