The members of the Transition Team are excited to be working with Rev. Jan Nolting Carter and Rev. Paul Rhebergen, co-founders of Transitional Ministry Pathways. Their partnership with Westminster leadership and the congregation will guide us through this transition time, including working toward the creation of a Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC) for pursuing new pastoral leadership.

From Jan and Paul:

We are Transitional Ministry Pathways (TMP), a coaching and consulting firm that works with pastors, leaders and churches in transition. We are friends and colleagues who together bring you a commitment to walking with you on your journey of discovering what God’s call is for your congregation in this moment in time and as you live into the next chapter of your congregation’s history. We bring over 50 years of transitional ministry experience to our work and over 65 years of ordained ministry. We are excited to begin our work with Westminster Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor!

We will be regularly updating you about our activities and the ways in which you can participate in the work of transition.

Read more about Jan and Paul here.

Updates and Info

Holy Vision 2024 Report

The Holy Vision 2024 team has taken faithful steps to listen to the hopes and dreams of our congregation, to compile data and insights, and to develop a report that offers both a snapshot of where we are and recommendations for our path forward.

Our New Stated Supply Pastor: Sept 2024

The Transition Ministry Team is excited to announce that Rev. Hannah Lundberg has joined Westminster as our Stated Supply pastor!

We have met with Hannah over a period of several months and believe that God has led her to us. We have found her to be warm and caring, with a deep love for the local church, and someone with a passion to work with people of all generations.

Rev. Lundberg will walk with us as our pastor, providing the pastoral care, consistency of preaching, and leadership as we continue to learn the Spirit’s guidance for our congregation. She will moderate the Session, working to implement the recommendations of our Holy Visions 2024 Team, intersect with Jan and Paul from TMPathways in our ongoing transition, and be the pastoral presence for our congregation.

Our work as a congregation does not end as Hannah begins her service. Her position is part-time (25 hours per week), so your service and support as a congregation is as important as ever. As a congregation, we will want to be considerate of Hannah’s time and availability. Because Rev. Hannah is a part time pastor, she will lead worship approximately three times a month, and we will continue to enjoy Nate’s sermons on a regular basis as well as support Sean Eaton as he completes lay preacher training through the Synod.

We have been amazed at how God has cared for this congregation and has taught us a lot about being the church over the last year. We have been able to live into the many parts of the body working together to serve the whole. God has blessed Westminster abundantly and continues to have plans for us as his body of believers. We have hope for the future in the Lord.

Please join with the Session and the Transition Team in welcoming Hannah to Westminster. Together, we will continue to be the body of Christ and be the Church.

Holy Vision Update: August 2024

We are grateful and impressed by the tremendous participation of Westminster’s congregation in the Congregational Assessment Survey and in the Listening Sessions. 69 people completed the survey and, to date, 55 have attended a Listening Session. Each of these numbers is greater than our average Sunday morning worship attendance. Your valuable feedback has provided some of the following insights on Westminster Presbyterian Church:

We are an engaged congregation. Over 85% of respondents are engaged in a church group or committee beyond Sunday morning worship.
We see ourselves as a family rather than as a loose association of individuals.
Two tasks we do well are: providing a meaningful worship experience, and engaging in acts of charity and service to those in need.
Many have increased their participation in the past few years, taking on new roles and responsibilities. Most of those who have decreased their participation have health related issues as the cause.
One of the biggest challenges in our past was how previous pastors addressed LGBTQ issues. However, we currently love and appreciate how warm, welcoming, and inclusive we have become.
Two of the roles we feel are most important in a new pastor are to act as a Minister of the Word/Teacher of the Congregation, and as that of a Friend/Fellow traveler.

Our next step is to interview community leaders and our neighbors in order for us to understand how they perceive our church and for them to share their ideas on how we can best serve the unique needs of this community. If you have thoughts on questions to ask our neighbors, please share them with a member of the Holy Vision 2024 team.

Holy Vision Update: June 2024

The Holy Vision team has been meeting regularly and working to understand what Westminster’s vision for the future is and help to prepare the way for a pastoral search. The work that the team is doing directly involves the congregation and the team appreciates all your support.

Our next activity is listening circles. These listening circles allow the team to hear from the congregation and include a guided discussion. Our goal is to accomplish as many of these listening circles as possible on June 9, when Jan Nolting Carter will be in town. After church, we will have a light lunch and break into circles of as many as 12 – 15 people plus a facilitator, recorder, and observer. We will have multiple listening circles running in different places in the church. Please plan to join us on June 9 for this activity. A sign-up sheet is in the entrance to the fellowship hall.

If you are not able to attend on June 9, we will be scheduling additional listening circles, both virtual and in-person.

The other activities underway for the Holy Vision team include:

Survey compilation: The team spent some time assessing different survey methods and selected a Congressional Assessment Survey prepared by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research. We were able to customize some of the questions but kept most of the questions as provided since this will help us compare with other congregations.
The Hartford Survey was recently closed, and the results are being compiled. We expect to receive a summary of responses and data from Hartford, and we will share these results with the congregation when they are available.
Demographic analysis: The team has been sorting through reams of data about the demographics of our area. We have been looking at three census tracts in the vicinity of the church (4043, 4044, and 4042) as these tracts are similar to how we have defined our neighborhood. The term “neighborhood” is one that we had a lot of conversation about at the retreat.
Neighborhood interviews: We are working on planning a series of neighborhood interviews where we will gather external perspectives on how our congregation can best serve the community.

Holy Vision 2024

The “Discernment” team has been renamed to the “Holy Vision 2024” team. This name better reflects the team’s purpose to determine not only where we are as a congregation now, but to look ahead to where we want to go in the future. We welcome your encouragement, your prayers, and your participation. Team members have been assigned roles as we begin our work over the coming weeks and months:

Convener: Carol Hufnagel
Vice Convener: Betty Chaffee
Chaplain: Gail Arnold
Secretary: Cathy Daniels
Communications Director: Eric Klooster
Member-at-large/super-sub: Matt Compton

Weekend Retreat Recap

The Westminster community gathered February 16-18 to get to know Paul Rhebergen and Jan Nolting Carter, our Transitional Ministry Pathways consultants. We celebrate the significant attendance at the weekend events, especially the Saturday retreat that included around 50 people–equal to our regular worshiping community!

Friday evening, Jan and Paul shared dinner with the Session and the Discernment Team, exchanging hopes and fears for our work together and the life of Westminster. Saturday’s retreat featured work together on a timeline of Westminster’s life. Participants were invited to place responses on sticky notes color coded to represent different categories of our life together. We put up when we joined the church, stories of when we felt closest to how God wants us to live as a church community, losses we grieve, celebrations we hold dear and world events.

The responses from this timeline have been gathered up and are on display near the library. You still have an opportunity to contribute as well! Visit the bulletin board for instructions. We are also on the lookout for photographs from different periods in the life of the church. Please look through your archives and bring in photos to share! (Photos can be put in the transition team box in the public office).

In addition to the creation of a timeline, we talked together about what we have lost and our grief and emotions surrounding our losses. Each table wrote a lament and one of them was used in worship on Sunday. You may hear others in worship in subsequent weeks. Those who gathered valued the honest conversation about what the congregation has lost and experienced and the invitation to share these stories that are more difficult to discuss.
One of the most intense conversations on Saturday surrounded Jan and Paul’s question to define Westminster’s neighborhood. Using a clip from Mr. Rodgers singing “Won’t you be my neighbor?” and another clip with Officer Clemmons cooling off in a small pool on a hot day, we thought together about what it means to walk with our neighbors. As we work together, we will continue to explore these questions and work further to define the Westminster neighborhood.

Other conversations included Generational Theory and its connection to church life and a conversation about the work of transition.

Sunday morning we gathered for worship, celebrating the partnership and journey between Westminster and Transitional Ministry Pathways. Jan and Paul preached a dialogue sermon about the Road to Emmaus, and we commissioned the members of the Discernment Team.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this important work!