Dear Church Family,

I am writing to share some updates on the behind-the-scenes of our church community. This letter will have updates on staffing changes, building upgrades, budget, and a few other tidbits as space allows. 

Staffing

We have two big staffing updates and one small but exciting one. Angel and I (Pastor John Jay) have been in discernment for the last year about how the church’s needs and her vocational calling overlap and/or diverge. When she started on staff almost two years ago, we created a two-year contract model that would allow us to reassess budget and overall staffing alignment for both the church and for Angel. Angel has a plurality of skills that have allowed her to flex as her job description and the needs of the church have changed from season to season. What began as a hybrid of pastoral and logistical work slowly became mostly upper-level administrative tasks and building/garage project management. While Angel has done this work at a high level, it has risked burning her out for lack of vocational alignment. When this dynamic became clear, Angel and I initiated conversations about how to best use her remaining time to serve her and the church well before she transitions off staff. Angel Cheng’s last Sunday officially on our staff as Administrative Pastor will be around the week of May 31st. She will focus her remaining time on transitioning the Parking Garage relationship with Perfect Parking, managing the large deferred maintenance projects, and advancing some key HR compliance needs. There are hundreds of other areas Angel has improved, clarified, and just made plain better at our church and with our staff. She is discerning what is next for her vocationally but plans to stay involved with our church as a lay leader as long as she is in the San Gabriel Valley area. We will create some space to honor all Angel has contributed and express our gratitude for her service. She has been patient with all of these changes to her role and our staffing needs. It has been an honor to work with someone of her integrity and generosity of spirit. Thanks, Angel! We would be less without you. 

The next staffing change to note is a (re)introduction. Cynthia Kirby is officially rejoining our staff but in a much different and more fitting role for her skills and growth. She will be our Director of Local Ministries, leading our efforts around Public Theology and local ministry partnerships while equipping our congregation to serve in our neighborhoods and beyond. Cynthia used to be on our staff in an administrative role, which she stepped out of towards the end of the pandemic. She continued to develop skills in the areas of ministry most fitting for her heart, experience and natural gifting. Cynthia came into this local ministries work as a high-level volunteer in 2022, essentially stress-testing the position while we explored how to integrate this work into our overall ministries. Bringing Cynthia on in a budgeted staff position is an investment in the long-term goals we have for how we participate in the interconnected work of local missions with other faith partners in our city and beyond. We will continue to allocate budget resources to this work and are excited about how Cynthia’s own development as a leader will make First Baptist Church a more integrated part of our local context. This is one way we are living into our hope to see God’s will be done “in Pasadena as it is in Heaven.”

Lastly, we have a little staffing bonus this summer with a new Divinity School intern. My friends at Duke Divinity School reached out to let me know they had a student who might be a great match for our congregation for a summer placement. With the Foundation’s financial help, we are bringing on Riley Taylor for 10 weeks this summer. Thank you to Dave and Cindy Ekstrand for being a host family for Riley. In the coming weeks, we will share a more extensive introduction, and from the conversations I have had with Riley, this should be a fun and life-giving partnership this summer. 

Budget

Now for some budget news. For many of you, the main way you interact with our ministries is through Sunday morning worship. In those hours together you see a compressed version of tons of labor and planning happening out of sight. If you are financially giving to our ministry budget, then you might be especially curious about all of that out-of-sight labor and planning. For those of you considering giving to our ministries or increasing your current commitment, this kind of transparent communication can provide assurance that your generosity is moving in powerful ways through our community and into the world. 

Anytime our overall ministry giving increases, our missions giving increases in kind. We have tied these realities together so that missions giving is always at least a 10% reflection of our overall giving. We have also found creative ways to increase our missions impact through generous partnerships with our building. We currently have two ministries who partner with us for office space, and we are exploring ways to expand this number as opportunity allows. Right now the Clergy Community Coalition (clergycommunitycoalition.org) and The Kinship Collective (thekinshipcollective.org) have office partnerships with our church. Both of these groups are doing great work, and our office partnership allows them to manage their own budgets while bringing some compelling work under our roof. This creative building use helps us to deepen our impact by using our existing assets that otherwise might be underutilized. 

For those parts of the building that we fully inhabit with our ministries, we are actively renovating and updating key infrastructures. We identified our children’s spaces as the highest priority for some needed improvements, namely climate control and better entrance/exit security. We have begun both of those projects in financial partnerships with the Foundation. We hope to have both of these projects completed by the end of 2023. The climate control project will bring heat and air conditioning to kid spaces on the first and second floors. Because of room layouts, we will also be able to bring climate control to a couple of adjacent general-use rooms, which will be a blessing for smaller adult gatherings during the most extreme weather months. Pastor Lindsay is working on a door security project that will allow us to control who has access to our kid spaces, providing much-needed safety for our families. This project was made possible in part by a gift from a generous family and partly by the Foundation investments. If you would like to learn about how to become part of our Foundation, you can learn more here: https://fbcpasadena.com/foundation

Parking Garage

The parking garage is officially part of First Baptist Church assets as of March 2023, and our management partner is Perfect Parking. This change represents years of hard work from our Deacon body and staff, and a huge push especially from Rich Laski in the last few months to help negotiate the terms of the transition with the City of Pasadena and Perfect Parking. We anticipate that the revenue from this new partnership will be more than budget projections this year, which is a huge blessing. As always, we estimated revenues conservatively and expenses with a cushion. 

Budget and Growth

Looking further out, I want to share a goal for our ministry budgeting process over the next several years. Our church is growing, which means key staffing and ministry expenses will need to grow as well. We also want to be able to retain our excellent staff in a competitive market and pay them a livable wage. Growth also puts extra strain on a building with deferred maintenance needs, so routine repair and renovation costs are going to be required to stay balanced and operational. Sustainability is one of our guiding strategic values, so I want to let you know how you can help us live into that value. We need to expand our budget over the next few years. We will continue sound financial practices that mitigate risk while addressing opportunities for deepened ministerial impact. We believe God is inviting us into a new season of community life. Our identity and leadership are hitting a powerful stride together, and our growth is happening in a natural and highly resonant way. You all know that this is a unique church community, and others are catching onto that as well. So if you have a healthy practice of generosity, I am glad to invite you into a more full awareness of how those resources are being used. If you have wondered why your giving matters, this letter helps in that regard. I am also happy to sit down and expand on this stuff. I love talking about our church and where God is leading us! If you have been inching toward belonging to this community, I am inviting you to move closer. God has given us everything we need to thrive, and you are part of that everything God is giving. We aren’t asking for pledge cards or stern commitments to a dollar amount. We trust God. We also trust you to decide what generosity practices are most meaningful and sustainable. Giving should be full of joy, overflowing from gratitude for all God has done for us. Your giving to this church makes possible the unique work God has given us to do in this time in this place. In all aspects of our shared life in this community, we need you and would be…

Less without you,

Pastor John Jay in partnership with the leadership of First Baptist Church of Pasadena