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Family Time

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by Dan Amos

For 18 years now, Elim has been home to me and my family. It’s where we experience the community of believers, where we worship corporately, where we serve, where we live, and where we give. Sometimes at home we get busy or things are just changing and it is good to stop and have family time to talk about what’s going on. I am excited about our direction and am eager to share that with you.

In my house family time can mean asking what’s going on in the next week or last year’s recurring talks about family finances. We talk about what it means for the family and how we are going to respond.

At Elim we have been talking about change for awhile, but the Elder Board, staff, and Ministry Leaders want to process with our whole family where we’ve been and where we’re going. Therefore, we are planning several “Family Times” over the next month to talk about these things, answer questions, and hear from you.

The first of these will be on Saturday evening, July 28, at Family Camp. We often have a potluck dinner on Saturday and follow it with a worship service. All of Elim is invited to join us at Alder Lake Park for this family time. The next one will be a homemade ice cream social at the Schlomers’ house (13314 74th Ave. East, Puyallup) on August 4 at 6:00. If you’re able to attend, please sign up in the fellowship room. We look forward to spending time together as a church family!

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Letter from Pastor Martin, Dan Amos and the Elder Board

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Dear Elim members and friends,

Six months ago, Stan Peterson began a one-year internship with us in holistic outreach and assimilation. During this year Stan was challenged to finish seminary with a Master of Divinity degree, pursue credentialing with the EFCA, help equip us to reach out to our community, and help us care for guests who visit with us on Sunday mornings. This was to be a year of exploring opportunities as well as having a role in preparing Stan for full-time ministry — possibly at Elim.

During the past six months Stan has jumped in head-first and has gotten well underway on each of those tasks. In addition, the entire staff, including Stan, has undergone an intensive profile assessment and coaching process to help us all better understand how God has wired and equipped them to be most effective in serving Him by leading His church.

As a result of this process, it became clear to Stan that an associate pastor position at Elim would not be a good fit. It became clear that Stan’s gifting leans more toward shepherding a church plant, being an army chaplain, or possibly a professor. All of these options are exciting to Stan! Please pray for the Petersons as they pray and discern their next steps.

This begs the question, “What’s next for Stan and Elim?” Stan will continue with the Elim internship through December. During this time, we will continue to do what we can to help prepare him for his next season of ministry. He will also finish his licensing through the EFCA in November.

We want to thank those who have been praying for this effort as well as contributing financially to Stan! Without your sacrifice, this internship would not have been possible.

As Elim grows, there is still a need for another staff position. As an Elder Board we are evaluating exactly what that need is, and how to best fill it. Please be in prayer about what this means for Elim moving forward. Pray for God-given discernment for the Elders as we process through the unique gifting of our staff and seek to identify the best way to organize and build our staff to meet the opportunities God has entrusted to us.

Thanks for your prayers! It is an exciting time to be at Elim right now. We look forward to seeing what God is going to do both in Stan and at Elim. If you have any questions, please talk with Pastor Martin or the Elders.

Sincerely,

Martin Schlomer
Senior Pastor

Dan Amos
Elder Board Chair

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Design

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by Dan Amos

A coincidence is when seemingly random events are perceived to be connected.  Coincidences form the basic structure for many movie mysteries and thrillers but by the end, the coincidences seem less random or are even wholly exposed as by design. Leadership at Elim is experiencing the benefits of events too purposeful to be considered random. Therefore, design, and we know the Designer, must be the answer.

I could recount events from years and years leading to where we are at now, but I’ll start with last year. Our associate pastor, Brian Sharpe, asked the Elder Board for authorization to go through a profile assessment and coaching process. We dragged our feet and made him do some research but ultimately said “yes.” Early this year, his coach gave the board an outbrief on the results.

Leading up to the profile assessment report we were wrestling with the realization that Elim is growing numerically and it is fundamentally changing how we do things. This was addressed in our 2012 Annual Report and discussed at our annual congregational meeting in January.

Shortly after that, Pastor Brian’s coach, presented his report to the Elder Board. This happened on a Saturday. On the Tuesday before that, at our Elder meeting, Pastor Martin had talked about needing to change his role in the church within the context of how we are growing. He described the tasks he felt he needed to take on as being extremely demotivating for him.

So several short days later, we got a lesson in how people are wired differently and it just jumped out that the roles Martin was talking about taking on were contrary to how he is wired (and why they would be demotivating). The Elder Board quickly saw the value in having all of the staff go through the profile assessment and coaching process and two weeks ago we and the ministry leaders and staff heard the results.

It is so exciting to see how God has put all of the pieces together and how he is revealing them to us. We have a lot to work through and apply and make sure we don’t force people into roles for which they are not made. We’ll talk more and more about this, but right now we ask for you to be praying for the leadership as we seek his design. There’s no coincidence in this at all. Praise God!

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A revolver spring

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by Dan Amos

We are blessed to have Martin as our full-time pastor with his training and experience. We are also fortunate that he has been gracious in sharing the pulpit and training others to step in when needed. Over the next month and a half or so he needs to take some time to spend with his dad and to have a procedure done to preserve and improve his eyesight. The Elder Board has encouraged him to take this personal time and several of the Elders will step in to fill the pulpit.

I will fill in this week during the men’s retreat and Martin will be back next week. After that, Brian, Larry, Stan, and Kevin Kompelien from the Evangelical Free Church’s ReachGlobal will bring the messages. Several of those sermons will be a detour from Philippians, but we’ll stay the course and finish just a little later than planned.

You can minister to Martin by praying for him and for those who will attempt to fill his big shoes. You can also help hold him accountable to trusting the team he has labored many years to build and for him to spend as little time as possible ministering to us and to focus on his dad and his own health.

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Grace, grace, incredible grace

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by Dan Amos

A few years ago, I was walking to church and passed by a small classical Greek-type statue thrown from a vehicle. I kept walking but the statue’s head caught my attention and I had to turn around and pick it up. I had been thinking about the direction life seemed to be taking and the debris of a replica statue from a failed civilization was something I couldn’t just pass by. It was a year or so later that I was given the opportunity to take an extended, unpaid vacation. I felt my change coming; surely that civilization felt change coming, too.

Now, I feel the change at Elim as we grow in numbers. Things are different and that can be unsettling. There are more new people than I can get to know. I think it is great that there are so many people coming together to worship and work out our faith together in community, but the social side of me wants to get to know everyone and I can’t. (Read more about church growth stress.)

I also sense issues percolating beneath the surface that need to be addressed. The difficulty is they often don’t appear until someone is frustrated to the point of giving up. This is where we can help each other cope with the change. The first step to resolving an issue is in knowing the issue exists. Tell someone who can make a change or point you to that person.

But the most important thing is grace, lots and lots of grace, both given and received. In the “Love and Respect” seminar, the speaker asserts in most cases our spouse is “a good-willed person” and good-willed people can still try one’s patience. As we grow and change, most of our frustrations are going to be caused by good-willed people and with communication and grace we’ll get through this and thrive. I am always thankful for the grace extended to me by my Elim family. It is desperately needed!

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Things I think

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by Dan Amos

If you choose to read this, you will get a glimpse in to the odd ways my mind works. I doubt you’ll find anything profound, but when things happen in my life, I tend to relate them to something else. Often I find myself learning a lesson of application of the things I’ve learned over the years about what God has revealed to us. The little vignettes of my life become object lessons that I ought to apply.

I recently returned to getting up and getting ready to leave for the day before everyone else in the house gets up. After I get dressed, I stop all movement, control my breathing and whisper “bye.” This is so I can be sure I don’t drown out my whisper with rustling, but even more to hear the faint reply if there is one. I was told on Monday to not bother with the whisper, just kiss her and she’ll go back to sleep. But, doesn’t that sound like what we have to do to hear God talking to us? All the noise and busyness of life makes it difficult to distinguish His voice when he is trying to communicate His love for us.

My new job was advertised needing knowledge of a database that I was sure I was one of the best in the company with. When I started, I found out there were parts of it I didn’t know existed. I am learning to use that part of it, but I had no idea it was even there. It reminded me of Paul’s lament that the more mature he became in his faith, the more he considered himself the greatest of sinners. That thought has never made more sense to me than now.

Last Saturday, Mark McCullough and I were winning at Hand and Foot over Fran and Barb.  (There you go Mark, it’s on the Internet now, so it must be true!) I was laughing and joking and Barb commented that she could see the stress of the last year was not evident that night to which I quipped I didn’t realize I internalized so much! But, this was an eye-opening statement for me and it really hit home the next morning listening to Keith Ferrin speaking on Philippians. If I was filled with so much stress over our predicament, was I really conducting myself in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ?

Lastly, there were a number of young and young-ish (!) men walking around the icy parking lot Sunday morning. We were trying to meet people as they got out of their cars and show them the paths we knew from our experience would get them into the church safely. In some instances we would say, “Follow me, walk in my footsteps because it is safe.” Again, we heard the same message from Paul in Philippians who told them he knew the way to Christ and he was leading them surely to His safety. Just like in response to the Gospel, some in the parking lot listened, some did not, and some insisted on following their own path, dangerously skirting risky areas.

So those are a few snapshots in to my thought processes. Maybe God teaches you in similar ways. If you have kids and ever disciplined them and heard the words coming out of your mouth sounding exactly like what God would be telling you, then you know what I’m talking about.

Oh, and about the kiss … when you know the right thing to do because you’ve already been told, quit asking if you should do it. Just do it.

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