Pastor’s Report 2024
by Pastor John Partridge
Note: Every year, I am asked to present a report of the year for our annual Charge Conference. It’s really sort of a “what I did last summer” kind of report that asks, “What did your church do for the last year?” Long ago I decided that my answers should not be seen as any kind of a secret, and so I publish them here, and in our church newsletter. I’m excited about the future of Christ Church and its people and I hope that by talking more about it, others might learn about it, join us, and grow with us as we care for the people around us the way that Jesus cares for us. So, what follows is this year’s report:
As Christ Church entered 2024, we committed to keeping our mission statement in the front of our awareness and thus keeping our focus on our mission to reach out to our community and to use our gifts to do whatever we can to meet the needs of the people around us. Each church committee was challenged to regularly consider how the goals set out in our mission statement might be met in the context of the work being done by that group. As a result, some changes were made. Some of those changes were subtle and others were more visible, but even the subtle ones are having an impact.
One of our goals was to offer training to our members and leaders to better prepare and equip us to do the work of Jesus in our community. Toward this end we hosted a Bridges Out of Poverty training course which was open to anyone and advertised to East Ohio Conference churches as well as to our local Chamber of Commerce and local schools. While we might have hoped for more, attendance at this training event was good and was attended by both members of Christ Church as well as others from our community. Christ Church continued in our pursuit of developing a more active presence and ministry on the campus of the University of Mount Union (UMU) and, toward that end, several of our campus ministry team attended monthly training webinars hosted by the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO). For several years, we had been hoping to partner with CCO in placing a campus ministry intern at UMU, but CCO has been challenged to find sufficient volunteers and, as of now, Christ Church has begun pursuing other options to establish and grow our presence on campus.
This year Christ Church continued to have a presence at the summer concerts at the caboose downtown where we gave out popcorn, water, and ice cream in exchange for donations to Habitat for Humanity. We also continued our collections in support of the Alliance Community Food Pantry, the Salvation Army, and the Alliance of Churches. In addition, with the growing number of children present in our worship services, we relaunched a monthly “Noisy Can” offering which has nearly tripled our regular giving to the Alliance of Churches bread ministry and the Salvation Army food pantry. Similarly, our increased focus on finding solutions for the needs of our community inspired our United Women of Faith to make a substantial $30,000 donation from the Martha Goldrick endowment fund toward the YWCA project which will provide temporary housing to women and children in crisis situations. $15,000 was donated to the YWCA for immediate needs and $15,000 was invested with the Greater Alliance Foundation in establishing the YWCA Transitional Housing Fund to encourage wider community support of future needs.
As noted, we continue to see an increase in the number of children each Sunday and have now launched a second class so that we can better provide age-appropriate instruction. At the same time, our youth ministry through scouting remains strong and is reaching many young people and their families through our Cub Scout pack and two scout troops.
For some time, our members have been encouraged to be more invitational, and that message has begun to bear fruit as we have seen an increase in the number of visitors as well as several new members and regular attenders coming from those who first came as invited guests. Thankfully, we have only lost one current member to death or transfer and have therefore seen an increase in our membership for the first time in several years. We have also scheduled a new member class (and we anticipate that another may be needed after that) and so we hope that we will soon add even more to our congregation.
Overall, we are seeing positive changes throughout the life of our congregation, and it is our hope that we will continue to encourage those changes and the growth that they have inspired. I am encouraged by the things that we have seen in 2024, and I am optimistic that we will continue to build on the growth that we have seen. In sum, I believe that there is a bright future for Christ Church, its mission to the people of our community, and our place in the work of Jesus Christ.
Blessings,
Pastor John Partridge
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