Every year-end, I expend a fair amount of time writing two-page, individual, personal letters to each of our Fellowship Pacific staff. I am unsure if it is a valuable use of time from their perspective, since the letters have a fairly unfiltered “stream-of-consciousness” style to them. On the other hand, I want each of them to end the year hearing how important they are to me and to the work we are striving to do together. The truth is that they are awesome people who are passionately committed to our churches and to the mission God has given us. More importantly, they are my coworkers with Jesus.

2021 REGIONAL DIRECTOR REPORT

As I write this report in late March 2021, we are a mere two weeks from Easter Sunday, at which time we will celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Like every one of you, I am hoping and praying that there will be permission granted by our Public Health Officer allowing our churches to lawfully open their doors to in-person gatherings. It is unclear whether that will or will not happen, given the increased Covid case-count through spring break. Either way, it seems likely that most of you share feelings of frustration as you look around at what is considered essential to our culture, and what is not.

SURVIVING THE COVID ICE AGE

You have probably all heard the frigid metaphor being used to define our experiences with Covid 19, whereby “we thought we were in a blizzard, then we thought we were in winter, but it turned out that we had entered a new ice age.” Not really encouraging. Unlike most of you, I was happily ignorant of that depressingly accurate description until one of our Fellowship staff brought it to my attention. If you are interested, we can probably work out a trade of staff member for staff member that will be to the benefit of your church.