To serve and protect

by Jay McKenney

All I have ever known in my life has been in the context of team, and my life has been blessed as a result. Coming to Sunset has been no different. Without a doubt one of the highlights here has been that we exist and operate in relationship, in team.

A few weeks ago I spent some time praying about how to best serve in my new role as ministry leader. I view that title to mean that my role and responsibility to serve has grown. One of the things I felt strongly was that I needed to form a new leadership team, as we head into the fall, to help me serve at a far greater capacity than I could on my own.

The purpose of this team is twofold. One role is to help me manage some of the strategic tasks (given to me by Ron and his team) for our ministry to carry out. These are big picture, philosophy type issues that are the foundation and reasoning behind the practical, day to day things that occur within our ministry. The other role is to advise, counsel, and help me arrive at decisions. Decisions I’m responsible for, but prefer to make in the context of a team.

Honestly, there are a lot of people, leaders, and friends I work with that also contribute advice and counsel who are not on this team. But I believe in developing a specific team of a few people who God provides for a time. Their focus is really to safeguard and serve the ministry, this community, and ultimately God, while helping us get better at what we do. Here’s who is serving on the team:

Top row from left to right:
Janet Fraser, Jay McKenney, Ben Porter, Tyler Braun
Bottom row:
Bob Thomas, Laura Padur

Each member will carry unique roles and responsibilities based on our gifts, passion, experience, etc.; but, I want to stress again that our main role is really leading as servants… servants who will spend much time in prayer and planning, and servants who will give of ourselves to be advocates for us all as we carry out the purposes of God as best we can.

For the last two days we have met to prepare for the fall.

Last week I wrote about our ministry’s motto for the year, “We choose to be real”. I want this to work its way into our DNA as an entire ministry and permeate all that we do. We believe this supports the church’s overall vision of connecting people to Jesus. We are SO excited about this upcoming season together at Sunset!