Church Council Announcement

Over the past 15 years as AWUC we have had two ministers in placement at here and both finished their time with us earlier than expected. Many of you have expressed concern that we are wearing out our ministers and the Council agrees: This is the reasoning behind asking the Pastoral Relations Committee to help us find and Intentional Interim Person or Minister to assist us with looking at this problem and helping us to have a better structure for a Minister to work with.

On Thursday night, Council unanimously agreed to appoint Lynne Aird as the Intentional Interim Minister here at Adelaide West.

Lynne will start here on the 30^th of this month.

This will be for a period of at least 12 months.

Lynne is an exit student and this will be her first placement. However, Lynne has a wealth of experience in the leadership and operations of a large regional church. Lynne has been heavily involved in Seeds Uniting for the past 13 years, was involved with the Vines UC for 14 years prior to that and has been part of the Synod team for 16 years.

The whole of the council and staff have met with Lynne and all are of one accord that Lynne has a lot of insight into how a large church can be managed and led. We feel that God has been very good to us and that it would be difficult to find a better match.

So, for the next twelve months at least, there will be change. I do not know what that will look like yet, but I do know that the intent of any change will be to help us to grow, to belong and to thrive without overloading the leadership our congregation and to involve all of us in the doing of life together as this family called Adelaide West Uniting Church.

In order to help even out expectations, I would like to take a couple of sentences to explain a bit of what I think might be reasonable to expect of Lynne. I do not expect that Lynne will just come in and take over where Rod left off.  As an Intentional Interim Minister, one of her major roles, is to ask questions of us and why we do this or that in this or that way. To help us to look at our various ministries and focuses. To work with us on setting up good structures of leadership and ministry. To build a good foundation for future growth and development as individuals and as a church.

The council and staff are excited to begin working with Lynne at the end of this month and we trust we will all make her feel welcome and offer her as much assistance as we can muster.

Blessings to you all.

Trevor Story
Council Chairperson.