Staff Transitions

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, on December 22 we celebrated the ministry of Linda Cooper as she prepared for retirement. It was a great celebration of a wonderful person! Which, of course, left us with a bit of a question—what's next? 

Since Linda let me know about her retirement, the staff, wardens, and I have been planning for a smooth transition. We talked through a number of ideas: Should we hire someone new? Should we think in big ways about restructuring our work as a staff? 

We have amazing momentum in our children's ministry—if you were at our 4 o'clock Christmas Eve service, you saw around 40 children in our pageant!—and we want to be able to continue that wonderful work. At the same time, we already have a faithful, excellent, and cohesive staff, and we don’t want to rock that boat too much. 

After much discussion and prayer, we decided that we already had the right people in place. So, rather than looking to hire a new person, we would make use of the talented people already on our staff, increasing the hours and widening the areas of responsibility for Lauren Abbott and Kelsey Wofford.

Lauren's new title is Director of Children's Ministry & Parish Engagement. She will be responsible for planning and implementing all programing for children and families in the parish. She will also be in charge of coordinating the church's calendar with our programs and communicating the programming to the parish and wider community.

Kelsey's new title is Director of Youth Ministry & Parish Life. She will continue her work with our youth group, and will take on much of the work of setting up for parish events, coordinating with volunteers around events, and continuing her excellent work on our parish website. 

Lauren and Kelsey already work together on many aspects of life at St. Peter's. I believe that seeing them continue this partnership will be a gift to our life and work here at St. Peter's! I'm thankful to both of them for their willingness to serve here, and I am excited for all that the future holds.

That said, Linda Cooper did A LOT for this parish, much of which didn't show up on her time sheet. Which means that, even given the increased roles of Kelsey and Lauren, there will be aspects of parish life that need more support from parishioners. I say this to ask you all, please think about how God might be calling you to serve our community in the year to come.

God is calling us to love and serve and care—for this church, the world, and each other. I can't wait to see how God's calling you to be a part of that in the year to come.

God bless,

Fr. Quinn+