SUCCESSION TEAM UPDATE VIDEO #1
Hello, I’m Jenny Anchondo Oakes, and a proud member of Lovers Lane United Methodist Church. I’m also truly honored to be part of our succession team charged with helping select our next Senior Pastor, and say good-bye in the best possible way to our Pastor Stan and Tammy Copeland. Heath and I chose Lovers Lane as a place to raise our family. Brighton was on the way when we came and Gemma just arrived 10 months ago. Brighton loves Sunday School and Kids Sing and Gemma is getting such good care in our awesome nursery. Heath and I enjoy Thrive and our friends we have made here. Enough about us. Let me tell you more about our Pastor Succession Team.
Our team is up and running. We had our initial full team meeting on the evening of November 11 from 6:00 to 8:00 and we got off to a great start. Our team is a diverse and talented group of 18 individuals representing a cross section of the entire church, and our 8 worship venues.
After spending some time getting to know one another, our consultant, Rev. Jim Ozier, introduced his company, Church Difference Makers, and the value they will bring to this important season in our church. Jim is a retired United Methodist pastor and in his fifty years of ministry served a large church in our conference and was on our North Texas Conference cabinet for seven years. He has dedicated his post-pastoral ministry to guiding churches through pastoral searches and transitions. He has wonderful relationships throughout the country that will serve us well in our process. Jim shared that he has already met with our Bishop, Ruben Saenz Jr., our bishop, and we have the bishop’s full support in this process. Bishop Saenz requested that we try to complete our work by January so that we have proper time to plan and execute an excellent transition.
Jim then walked us through the key components of the process. We are currently in our preparation phase and have assigned subcommittees to help develop our church's "current reality" along with our prioritized “set of values” we hope to find in our next pastor. We are also leveraging the great work recently completed by our Power of One task force and Stan’s last Pastor’s Report to the Charge Conference to inform potential candidates of the vision and roadmap developed for our future.
Jim has also started what is called a "sonar search" to begin identifying potential candidates that might be a fit for our church. Jim's connections throughout the US are already yielding quite a bit of activity here. He reiterated what we all already knew that Lovers Lane is a wonderful church and one of the top recognized influencer churches in United Methodism. There is great interest in the Senior Pastor’s position.
We got a lot of work done and know we have much work left to do. The entire team is prayerful and enthusiastic. We are committed to a thorough and transparent process. Please also understand some components of this process require a strict adherence to confidentiality, as one might expect in dealing pastoral changes. We will look forward to sharing regularly what we can share and know that we covet your prayers in our work and for our great congregation. You can go to the website llumc.org click the about tab and open the succession folder there you will find our posted material.
Transparency is our value and you will hear directly from us concerning our process. Thanks for your time and interest.