It is always the desire of our church staff and elders to do our best in serving the Integrity family. So – I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you of the re-organizing that we have done in the church staff over the past 4-5 months, and to bring you up-to-date on what has been happening. As you probably know, Debbie Summers served us faithfully and very competently as our Chief of Staff and Pastoral Assistant for the past seven years. In preparation for her ultimate future relocation to South Carolina, she took a ‘work from anywhere’ position with an organizational health consulting firm based in Florida. We’re proud of her as she is already having great impacts within that firm.
Whenever someone of Debbie’s strong capabilities and impact leaves a position, it takes a lot of planning and some ‘trial and error’ to get things back in balance. In effect, to replace the actual position that Debbie held, we have distributed the Chief of Staff responsibilities for Debbie’s job among myself and our three more senior staff members – Chris Newsom, Ray Crompton and Maryjo Pollard. The Pastoral assistant role previously held by Debbie has been distributed among these three and a few others on our staff.
I thought that as we begin a new 2024, and as things are beginning to settle a bit with our staff and responsibilities, NOW would be a good time to review with you again these shifts in roles and responsibilities. I will list below our staff members, their current roles and those that may have been recently re-distributed to them….
Chris Newsom has assumed from Debbie responsibility for all of our office management and administrative technology functions. These are of course in addition to his roles in overseeing marketing, external communications, advertising, online presence, and musical worship direction for Integrity.
Maryjo Pollard, in addition to her Children’s Ministries and Preschool directorship, has taken on Debbie’s role as coordinator of Big events, such as Trunk n’ Treat, various Christmas functions, Conferences, etc. She also has responsibilities for new ventures in support of our NextGen focus.
Ray Crompton has added from Debbie the roles of Volunteer Management and overseeing staff meetings. Ray continues to oversee International and local missions, our groups and pastoral care ministries, along with prayer and connections ministries. Ray of course also continues to lead our Midweek Recharge.
Our elders are heavily in the act of the day-to-day activities of managing the Integrity Church operations.
Barry Kelly, one of our elders who has been working with our finances for years, has picked up additional financial management functional roles from Debbie.
Mike Ward, another of our elders who has served operationally for a long time, has maintained his responsibilities for Facilities and Grounds, and has picked up Tenant relationships from Debbie’s prior positional responsibilities.
We are fortunate to have Debbie still working with us at the equivalency of one day per week, primarily working with Barry in our financial management functions, and working with me on any special projects and new initiatives.
Mary Anne Fritts began in October serving at a level of one day / week to oversee our international missions, and our Women’s Ministry. MaryAnne reports to Ray.
Opie Taylor, our beloved Student Director, continues his work with our middle and high schoolers, and our young adults. He has also picked responsibility for our local missions efforts, and reports to Ray.
Krystjan Klischer, who has led our Mission House Café since early summer of last year, has assumed from Debbie the responsibilities for Facilities usage and reservations. She has also taken on the publishing of our weekly newsletter, Integrity Insights, which comes out through the email feed each Wednesday. Krystjan reports jointly to Chris and myself.
There are also a number of functions of a general office management and support nature that Debbie performed. Those functions have been assumed through the front office receptionist and office assistant role. Marvelis Buelvas had assumed this role in October. Marvelis is a very talented individual, and has done a really good job in helping to keep things tied together for us. However, Marvelis has decided to move out of this role, to spend more time with her young and beautiful family, featuring one year old (almost) Samantha, 5th grade Melody and of course, husband Julio. Marvelis will also focus time on her personal bookkeeping and tax preparation business, and her commitment to serving the Latino community in our church family (our Latino friends had a really fun get-together this past weekend!).
To cover this role, Holly Colvard has assumed this position as part-time receptionist and administrative assistant on an interim basis, working mornings primarily. Holly and husband Kevin serve faithfully in our music ministry, and Holly serves as well on our Connections team. She strong set of administrative and organizational skills and experience. If you need to call in or drop by, you may experience her friendly demeanor. Holly reports jointly to Chris and myself.
A Final Word: From Day One of Integrity Church, we have committed that the main role of Integrity staff members is to facilitate every member of the Integrity church family fulfilling their own God-ordained ministry and mission function(s). Our motto has always been ‘Every Member is a Minister!’ and we mean that sincerely. Paul, speaking to the responsibility of all church family members to assume ownership for their God-given roles in the church, said in Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
Paul elaborates further on this, in describing the intended role of pastors, elders, staff, etc. in the church. In Ephesians 4:11–13 he writes “11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”
Thank you for being a part of the Integrity church family. I know that I can speak for our staff, elders and ministry leaders in saying that it is a privilege and an honor to work alongside you in helping the grow the Kingdom of God!
Bud
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