I am happy to announce that Rev. Dinah Shelly was appointed by our Bishop as the Senior Pastor for Spring Creek UMC in Fair Oaks Ranch. This is a tremendous honor for Dinah because she will lead her own congregation and will be able to share her wonderful gifts with that growing church. Congratulations, Dinah!
Since COVID is entering an endemic stage and we are returning to more “normal” times, we are promoting several of our staff members to new positions and modifying key responsibilities to allow them to better serve and grow our church.
As many of you know, Valerie Slade works tirelessly for the church and is known as our Energizer Bunny because she never seems to run out of energy. Because of her tremendous dedication to our church and her great work, we are promoting her to Executive Director. In this new role, Valerie will report to Rev. Holly Gotelli and will continue to supervise the Finance Department/Human Resources and be responsible for the day-to-day management of the staff. She will also work with Holly in coordinating the activities of the Board of Stewards and other standing committees of the church. Valerie will have a lot on her plate, but she makes it all look easy (even though it isn’t).
We are also promoting Dana Hawkes from Welcoming Ministry Coordinator position to full-time Associate Director of Finance. Dana is a tremendous asset for our church and is ready for this new challenge. She will work with Valerie on financial transactions, board and committee reports, payroll, and employee benefits in her new role. She has big shoes to fill, but we all know that she will do a fantastic job.
Rev. Dr. Darrell Smith will hand-off some of his existing worship and administrative responsibilities to create space for stewarding our Communications Team, making him the Pastor of Discipleship and Communications. Little known fact: Darrell has a communications degree! We should have known that because he is a great communicator! He is taking on a new role that is vital to our current members and the growth of our church. Thank you, Darrell, for all that you do.
Finally, Laura Peel has agreed to wear many hats for the church as she expands her administrative role to work with the Communications and Finance Teams in addition to supporting Youth Ministry. Laura provides essential support to all of those teams and does it in a joyful way. We are so blessed to have Laura on our team.
As we continue to reach out into our community, we are actively seeking a new part-time Welcoming Ministry Coordinator to help us make sure that we provide a warm and welcoming environment for our guests and to help our potential and new members connect with our AHUMC community.
It would be our great honor to find someone already involved with our church to fill this role. Please help us with referrals. If you have a referral, please send Valerie an email at vslade@ahumc.org. A complete description of this job can be found on www.indeed.com.
As we celebrate all of these well-deserved promotions and new positions, I wanted to specifically recognize Holly. She has literally been the glue that has held us together through COVID. During this difficult period, she has challenged us, inspired us, and loved us. She has been laser-focused on our mission statement to welcome all people, build community, share God’s love, and serve the world. I hope that each of you will take a minute to thank her for all that she does and to let her know how thankful you are that God brought her to us!
