2021-Q1. Pastoral Care Lead Report

Covid 19 continues to affect McDougall and its members. Most miss attending church and seeing friends. They still care for each other.

After our February proposal of increasing the Pastoral Care hours to 20 hours a week was not brought to the Leadership Council, we stressed to  the Planning Group that McDougall needs to make Pastoral Care a priority in its focus and needs to maintain 15 hours a week by staff. With our aging congregation, we feel this is important to have this commitment as we go forward.

We are pleased that Rev. Joanne Anquist will devote 9 hours a week to Pastoral Care and the new 0.5 Minister will spend 6 hours a week to Pastoral Care after Pastoral Care Coordinator Rachel Nadon leaves at the end of June.

To maintain contact with our members, we did a phone out in February.  We reached 229 households. Thank you to the 44 phoners. Thank you to Shirley Wilding for organizing this ministry.

We delivered 44 Newsletters in March.

Rachel Nadon continues to phone shut-ins. She leads Sunday Coffee Time on Zoom.

Rev. Joanne Anquist continues with Friday Coffee group on Zoom. Other groups meet on Zoom and like “seeing “ others even though we cannot attend church. Many members enjoy the recorded Sunday services.

Members of McDougall check on each other and phone friends regularly. There have been drive- by birthday and anniversary celebrations. People are looking forward to safe visits when the weather improves and restrictions are lifted.

Respectfully submitted,

Esther Petersen