Welcome to The Pastors’ Post, an update for life at Southern Cross.
This is a special edition of The Pastors’ Post – Part 1, regarding the Families Pastor role for 2022. As you will have heard last Sunday 12th September, Tim McDonald is sadly stepping down from the Families Pastor role at SCPC and will have his final Sunday on 17th October. We are thankful to our Father God for the manner and humility by which Tim and Jasmine have explored this challenge in their life with Leadership Team.
Since Tim indicated to Leadership Team early this term that he would be finishing up, he has been eager to ensure his responsibilities would be set up for Term 4 to enable stability to be retained. For the last couple of weeks, he has been working on the Term 4 program for our youth ministry at Southern Cross. We are extremely thankful to Tim for his hard work in this. As a plan for the remainder of 2021, Leadership Team has approached a member of the Youth team to fulfil a Youth admin role, one day a week starting Friday 22nd October to ensure the Term 4 roster is enacted and materials are printed for the Youth gathering each Friday night. This will be a purely administrative and logistics role.
As a contingency for 2022, Leadership Team has approached James Ritchie about fulfilling the position in an interim capacity in 2022. Many of you will know James, many of you will know James as ‘Ritchie’! For those who don’t know James or simply wish to hear again from Ritchie, there is a Part 2 to this Pastors’ Post, which you can find on the website which is a recording of a ZOOM room with ‘Ritchie’ and I.
Again, some of you might think “I thought James, Jasmin, Rosie and Reuben are serving God’s people and shining the light of the gospel in Hobart, Tasmania!?” and the answer is “yes! They are until the end of this year”. James happened to call me a couple of months back about opportunities to serve in the Northern Rivers as they were contemplating a move to the Northern Rivers or South East Queensland. At that point I was able to share what I knew about vacancies in the Northern Rivers for 2022, not actually expecting Southern Cross would have one.
Therefore, after Tim and Jasmine’s news, Leadership Team began contemplating a contingency for 2022. Not too far into the conversation, James’ name came up. There was lots of positivity and so we decided to ring James and Jasmin to see if they would be willing to explore the prospect of a 2022 position at SCPC.
By James and Jasmin’s response, a phone call from Southern Cross about a possible role for 2022 was not what they were expecting! But following a couple of weeks of prayer and consultation both with Southern Cross and other ministry opportunities for 2022, they have made themselves available for 2022.
So where to from here for Southern Cross and the Ritchie’s? Firstly, Ritchie’s role and suitability has to be endorsed by the Northern Rivers Presbytery as a Pastoral Assistant (unsupervised). His supervision and oversight comes not from SCPC and it’s leadership team, but from the Northern Rivers Presbytery. The next meeting of Presbytery is October 6 at which James’ name would be put forward to be endorsed by the minsters and elders of the Northern Rivers.
If James was endorsed by NRP on October 6, SCPC would have a congregational meeting around one month later on November 7 to endorse the financials for the position for 2022. However, we would have a preliminary information meeting on October 31 to explain and discuss the congregational meeting that would occur one week later in November.
If those meetings move forward, James would begin January 1, 2022, and something James has requested, and a likely request from Northern Rivers Presbytery, and SCPC, is that as an ordained Presbyterian minister, James would need to go through a call process in 2022. Ritchie is keen to get a sense from Ministry and Mission, The Northern Rivers Presbytery, and Southern Cross, that they are all keen for he and Jasmin to serve in this context into the future.
Quickly, and finally, what are some things we do know? Committee of Management is aware that due to James’ training and experience, there would be an increased remuneration package for James compared to Tim currently serving in the position. For as you would know Tim, has a degree in theology but is not an ordained Presbyterian minister. So as was mentioned in the COM report last week, we are thrilled budget is tracking well for 2021 but we were running a deficit budget in 2021. So we always encourage generosity to support and extend our ministry at Southern Cross, across the roads of our city and beyond!
We are also aware that moving from Tasmania to a state in lockdown will not be an cheap endeavour so pending outcomes of coming meetings, you might like to consider contributing to ‘Ritchie removals’. How do you do that, you might ask? Good question!
You can make an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) or use PayPal on our website and select The Common Fund. In the remitter name put: ‘Ritchie Removals’. That will allow our Common Fund committee and financial team at SCPC to direct that successfully to the Ritchies to assist them with a possible BiG move ahead!
Lots happening isn’t there!? Lock-downs. Plans made. Plans flop. Plans change. Failure!
Frustration!! Fatigue!!! In my quiet times, I have been reading the book of Joshua and so I will leave you with this from Joshua chapter 1:
7 “Be strong and very courageous.
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you;
do not turn from it to the right or to the left,
that you may be successful wherever you go.
8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips;
meditate on it day and night
Thanks for tuning in to The Pastors’ Post.
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