Thank you to everyone who was able to stay after the service 17 June for the Transition Team presentation. We appreciated your feedback, and I thought the dialogue was helpful for everyone involved. This email is a summary of what we presented, and I hope that it will offer some clarity to everyone about where we are going, and how we plan to get there.

Values & Practices
I have attached the list of values and practices we presented. Please take the time to look these over, meditate on them, and try them out in your life. I think you will find them useful as we join together to walk in the way of Jesus. You might even want to commit them to memory. These should shape the purpose and practice of Tapestry for years to come.

A Road Map
The Transition Team has finished with the values and practices. We will take the summer to begin working on a covenant, statement of faith, and constitution. We don’t expect to be done with these documents before December. We plan to begin taking résumés and talking with pastoral candidates in September, before we are finished with these documents, knowing that it may take several months to settle on a candidate.

Tapestry is making steady progress in calling a new pastor. Though this may seem like a slow process, it is not unusual for churches that already have their values, practices, constitution, and covenant in place to take well more than a year in finding the right person to lead their church. Tapestry is not only formulating all these documents, but calling a pastor at the same time, and we still expect to be in a position to call a pastor by January 2008. This does not mean that we will find the right person by then; only God knows when that will happen. But it does mean that we will be ready for it to happen.

A Thought
God had always planned to give Israel a king. Moses predicted it would happen one day. The problem with Israel asking for a king in 1 Samuel 8 was not that God had other plans, but that Israel was more willing to put their faith in a king than in God. Samuel rebuked them for this, and though God provided a king, their first king was far from their best. “We want to be like the nations around us,” they said, “Our king will lead us into battle” (v20). Now, a pastor is no king, but the question for us is very much the same in this time of transition. Will we insist on a leader to bring us stability, or will we trust God? Will we be satisfied to follow Him? Will we wait for Him to provide us a new pastor, or will we insist on our own provision now? I know Tapestry well enough to believe that we all want to wait for God. I know people well enough to know that, just like Israel, the harder things get as they now stand, the more we are going to want to insist on a quick solution. This doesn’t mean that we wait idly by for God to magically work everything out. It means that we have enough faith and patience to go through the process the right way, even when it’s hard, and to trust God to work things out in His timing. It means active waiting, with us doing everything we can to prepare for the moment of God’s provision. If you have no particular role to play, your active prayers and open eyes will still be a great asset to the church. Please ask God to provide, and to help us know when He has put the right person in our path. Please keep your eyes out for pastoral candidates you can request a résumé from and recommend to the Transition Team.

For More Info
Feel free to contact me about anything concerning this process of transition. I will be happy to answer your questions as well as I am able, and to share any concerns you have with the rest of the Transition Team. May God bless us with wisdom and patience as we seek to follow Him above all others.

-Nick