Dear Good People of North Community Church!

I spent some reflective time thinking about which words would best express all the feelings and memories and blessings this past seventeen months brought to us both. I keep coming up with the same two words: thank you.

Thank you for welcoming me as your Interim Minister as heartily as you welcomed my family 32 years ago when Doug and I and our four kids blended our lives together with the blessing of Rev. Ed Duffey.

Thank you for affirming my ministry here this time as sincerely as you affirmed it the day I was ordained here in 2008.

Thank you for trusting me to accompany you on your journey out of the wilderness of COVID and the loss of a settled pastor through the hard work of visioning to the exciting future now ahead of you.

Thank you for saying “yes” to participating and assisting and coordinating and leading and generally jumping into every facet of the church’s ministry.

Thank you for your sense of humor and your easy laughter both within the sanctuary and without.

Thank you for being open to new ways of thinking and doing and being.

Thank you for believing that God was with us the whole way and will continue to be as we part and go our separate ways.

You have been blessed with a talented, enthusiastic, insightful pastor and he will be blessed by you – a congregation who is loving and caring and willing, faithful, fun-loving and always ready to give.

We have all been blessed by God with a past, a present and a future held in God’s hands and given to us for good.

Thank you and thank God.

With all God’s blessings upon you, your new Pastor and your future together, and with all my love,

Pastor Ann