Akaloo Rally Day

Hey guys, just wanted to remind you of Akaloo Rally day Sept 10. We will have computers available for your usage. Come and see how great our new interactive curriculum is.

Sunday School Teachers Needed

Sunday School begins Sept. 10 and we are still short a few teachers. We are looking for 2 people to team teach ages 2-3. We also need 1-2 high school teachers and a substitute for 5th-6th graders. This years curriculum is new, easy to use, and exciting. Please consider this opportunity and contact Amber Walker, Warren Escovy or Warren White if interested. Thanks.

LYO Ministry Team Leaders

Hosanna has 9 high school youth who are serving on LYO this school year. These youth plan and lead all retreats offered to youth by the synod. They are: Abby Brown, Christine Carter, Marquette Henderson, Evan Haight, Jacob Romijn, Caty Oden, Laura Greer, CJ Welshons, and Mark Moore. Hosanna can be proud that these youth represent our church. We wish them luck. Please keep them in your prayers as they travel to Lutherhill this weekend for training.

Family Life news for September

Hey Everyone. Here is what's going on with Family Life for September:
CREW, welcome back you guys. Come join us for rally day on Sep. 10. Then let's meet that night at 5 at Free Birds on 1960 @ Cutten for dinner. After we will walk down to Stone Moves and do some rock climbing at 6. Cost is $10 for dinner and $10 for Stone Moves. On Sep 17 let's meet at Denny's for breakfast. Meet in the Sunday School room and we will ride together. Beginning Sep. 24 CREW will begin a 6 week bible study on stewardship and finances for teenages. This is a great course you will really enjoy. See you there.

Sunday School Rally day is Sep 10. Come see how great Akaloo is. Try it out for yourself. We will have computer stations and snacks. Be sure to stop by and say hello to your new teacher!

Confirmation: See you on the 27th @ 7. Bring a snack to share and let's get to know each other!

Our Third Quarter Ministry Priorities

Dear Fellow Saints of God Called to Serve, Praise and Grow:

Your leadership is very grateful for our accomplishments of the first half of 2006. We are glad to announce that we met all our ministry and mission priorities! We accomplished this by using the money given in 2005 plus your donations in 2006. (See the enclosed balance sheet) The 2nd quarter priorities that were fully funded were: (rounded off)
1. $9600 for Utilities and insurance
2. $54609 for Staff Support that included salaries, synod assembly expenses, benefits and administrative expenses
3. $4800 for our support of Synod Benevolence
4. $1592 for our Stewardship Team that included repairs to the air conditioning system.
5. $1117 for our Spiritual Life Ministry that included instrument maintenance, music, Easter Services and publications
6 $4661 for our Discipleship Ministries that included subsidies for our children’s summer camping, National Youth Gathering, adult education and Sunday School
7 $1092 for our Lay Leadership Ministry that included sending 3 voting members to the synod assembly
8. $1241 for our Care Ministries that included $1000.00 to NAM and Interfaith Care Partners
9. $ 5000.00 for our From the Heart Appeal (this is a reimbursable expense from the appeal funds)

We want to thank you for your commitment to working together as the people of God to do God’s work. Without your support we could not have done all of this.

Now we turn to the next quarter(July-September) and we see the challenge ahead of us. We are confident based on past and current giving patterns that we can fund our top four priorities. These are:
1. Our facilities maintenance needs. This we estimate to be $16390 and includes insurance, utilities, and minor repair for the air conditioning system.
2. Our staff support. We estimate that this, including office administration, will cost about $51,000. This budget supports two full time people with benefits and 6 part-time with no benefits.
3. Our support of the synod of $4800.00
4. Our discipleship ministries: It is vital that we plan on spending $3756 for Sunday School and confirmation curriculum for the coming 06-07 year. We are converting to new on-line program published by Augsburg-Fortress that will reduce costs in this area and provide more resources for teachers and students. The discipleship team is very excited about what this program can do for our community’s growth in faith.

These next priorities are also important, but their accomplishment will depend on how we respond with our personal stewardship. The formula is very simple, The more we give, the more of God’s work we are able to do. We give not out of pressure, but because we see the vision and want the joy of seeing these visions become reality. We also understand how God richly blesses us and we share this abundance with others.
The next priorities are:
5. Care. $900.00. This includes support of NAM and other local social ministries
6. Lay Leadership. $400.00, This includes funds for recognition and support of our Lay Leadership and meal at our September 10 congregation meeting.
7. Spiritual Life. $600 This includes money for music and altar guild supplies.
8. Stewardship- $3026 for cleaning of Ministry Center Carpets, nave and sanctuary chairs. $7600 for resealing of our parking lot.

We thank you in advance for joining us in giving inorder to meet all the priories for this next quarter. We look forward to sharing with you in the next mailing how well we responded to God’s call. We are honored to be your leaders and serve to do our best to move our congregation forward.

We also want to continue to thank all those who give their time and prayers to the work of our congregation. This is just as vital as the giving of our financial blessings.

Grace and Peace,

Your Council Leadership

Agenda for Congregation Meal and Meeting, Sept 10 12:30

• Building/ Mortgage Financial Report -- George Carlson
• From the Heart Appeal Report-- Gary Hellner
• Financial Report -- Finance Team
• Proposal to increase Family Life Minister's hours to 30 hours a week and pay by $750.00 per month--- Staff Support and Discipleship
• Approval of changes of bylaw and constitution changes as sent to the congregation (see website calendar for Sept 10 congregation meeting)- Nancy Agafitei
• election of secretary, Maureen Kennedy,- Lay Leadership
• election of financial secretary-nominations are open - Lay Leadership
• Recognitions- Lay Leadership
• Installation of our new officers and team leaders . - Pastor Tart
• Parents and Educator Advocating for Children and Educators - Pastor Tart
(P.E.A.C.E) project is an after school program for Bammel Middle School. Hosanna has been invited to adopt Bammel as target ministry and to offer support to this program managed by the YMCA. We are being asked to provide representatives to the oversight council and to offer community support. Earl Kemper has agreed to represent the congregation on this committee.
• For the Good of the Church- Pastor Tart

Thoughts that seem important

This past week I received this email from our churchwide Bishop, Mark Hanson. I found it meaningful and want to share it with you. In particular, I liked the part about the challenge to stay faithful to our proclamation of the cross and Jesus, crucified and risen. He asks some very good questions of us.
I also would like to talk to him about who has the best call. I think I could win the debate.
From Bishop Mark Hanson:
Grace and peace to you. As we move out of summer into the busier schedules of fall, I have been thinking about what an intriguing time it is to be in ministry. At a recent synod assembly, I commented that I think I might have the best call in this church, for I am privileged to see what the Holy Spirit is doing through the faith lives of ELCA members and through ELCA ministries. The response to my statement was a bit surprising, but wonderful to experience: pastors and lay rostered leaders spontaneously lined up to challenge me. They wanted to tell me why theirs is the best call in this church.

I share that experience not to foster a greater spirit of competition among us. In fact, I have heard many of you describe the challenge of serving in a religious marketplace that is both competitive and consumer-oriented and in a culture that seems both fractious and polarized. Such conditions can lead to a feeling of isolation and discouragement in ministry. It is, therefore, a great sign of hope for this church to hear the stories of those who proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, who are grounded in the strong theological themes of the ongoing Lutheran Reformation, who delight in seeing members deepen their lives of discipleship, who are imaginative as their ministries are shaped by changing contexts, who are energized by teaching and working with youth and families, and who are renewed by the Holy Spirit in their lives of prayer, conversation, and reflection.

In July, the ELCA Church Council held a retreat that focused on one of the churchwide organization's strategic directions: "Support congregations in their call to be faithful, welcoming, and generous, sharing the mind of Christ." Kenneth Inskeep, ELCA director for research and evaluation, shared a very helpful overview of ELCA membership and congregations, and comparable information about other religious bodies in the United States.

ELCA teaching theologian James Nieman of Hartford Seminary suggested that in light of membership losses, we might think the primary questions are, "Will we survive this decline? Can we ever make our impact felt again?" He argued that these are neither the principal challenges nor our most pertinent issues.

Nieman contends that the most pressing questions are, "What shall we proclaim? How shall we support our mutual work?" Thus the underlying challenge is theological: what we proclaim as church in mission. He said, "If we long merely for survival and influence, we will abandon solidarity with the margins, lose our distinctive voice, and foster disconnection and fragmentation."

Think about the core language of the church that describes God's encounter with us, and shapes the patterns of faithful life and work in and beyond the church. For Lutherans, that story is centered in the living Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Through the gospel, the Holy Spirit brings us to faith and gives us gifts for ministry. In a culture preoccupied with success, it is a theology of the cross that must continue to shape our identity and mission.

Nieman expanded upon four "distinctive and potent ways" we can contribute to the mission of this church:

Reframing the tools: move past accountability based on direct measures (numbers, trends, finances) to focus on the formation of what Nieman calls "faithful character" in congregations.
Remembering small congregations: small size does not mean low vitality; there is a distinctive voice of the small congregation in the larger ecology of the church.
Rethinking larger congregations: 28 percent of ELCA congregations are growing in membership. What do reciprocal relationships between congregations of various sizes look like in this interdependent church engaged in God's mission?
Reclaiming our testimony: how might all the baptized be encouraged to share daily the story of who they are in light of God's grace and mercy in Christ Jesus?
How do we together discern what God is doing so that we might give faithful witness to it?
There's no need to debate who has the best call. Rather, we can encourage each another, pray for each other, listen to each other, and see our calls as shared calls to ministries of Word and Sacrament and Word and Service. I thank God for each of you in your ministries, whether in congregations, in specialized settings, or in retirement and share this blessing from the rite of installation with you: "(May) the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."
Remember: Stay faithful to the proclamation

Annual Staff Appraisals

During the month of August and until the middle of September, the staff support team encourages the congregation to provide written comments on the job performance of all paid staff. These comments will help prepare an objective job performance appraisal. Comments on all paid staff, with the exception of the Pastor Tart, can be sent to Pastor Tart at the office or his email address david.tart@welcometohosanna.com. Comments on the Pastor Tart will be sent to George Carlson at Georgelcarlsontx@aol.com or by mail to his address at 1518 Anvil Drive
Houston, TX 77090