An Important Day for ATN
This past Sunday was a very important day in the life of All Things New and I want to explain the reasons why this is the case. Before I do that, I do want to thank Palm Valley Baptist Church for allowing me to come and preach for them while their Pastor was out of town visiting family. I had forgotten how much I enjoy preaching in English to people who understand English. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and over the next few months (aside from the Sundays that I will be in Haiti) if your church is in need of someone to preach, if you are part of a Christian school and need someone to lead a chapel, or if you are looking for a missionary to come and share about their experiences, please let me know. It keeps me sharp and I genuinely enjoy doing it.
My preaching, however, is not why this past Sunday was important for our organization. We had our 5th annual board meeting (not the 5th meeting since we started, but each year our biggest meeting is called the “annual” meeting) since our incorporation in February of 2013 and we discussed some big changes that we are hoping to make organizationally as All Things New continues to grow and mature. When we first started, we did what most nonprofit organizations do and adopted a set of general by-laws, recruited a small board, and really focused on what it would take to get our organization off of the ground. As we have matured and grown, it has become clear that we need to take steps forward as an organization as well. I have recently laid those organizational changes out in a previous blog (please read that blog by clicking here if you missed it a couple of weeks ago) so I will simply list those changes here and let you go back and read the blog for further explanation. The list is as follows:
- We want to recruit new board members with different and new skill sets and connections.
- We are moving to a committee structure and are hoping that these smaller groups drive our organization forward.
- We want to recruit some of you to join these committees and to put your passion and expertise to use for ATN if this is something that you are willing to do.
- I am going to step down as President and off of the board so that I can focus on our work in Haiti.
So you may be wondering why this past Sunday was such an important day for All Things New moving forward…It is because the leadership of ATN is in agreement on how we want to move forward and we are beginning to make strives toward that end. We believe that these changes will strengthen ATN’s ability to operate and minister in Haiti while at the same time making us more efficient at communication, fundraising, budgeting, governance, and the overall running of our organization. It is funny, when you start a ministry, there are so many things that you think through and are ready to handle, but there are just as many (if not more) things that you did not even know you needed to be prepared for. The truth is that it is in the latter issues that an organization either fails or succeeds. Our hope is that you will help us succeed and continue on the path of becoming a wonderful nonprofit that allows us to minister to our kids, to our community, and to the many people in America who are a part of All Things New.
Over the next couple of weeks we will begin sending descriptions of each of the different committees that we will be forming for All Things New. While we will begin recruiting people soon, we would rather hear from you first. If you are looking to get more deeply involved with ATN, please read over these descriptions as they come and let us know which committee (we we will call them teams from here on out) suits you the best. We hope that these teams help us improve our ability to do ministry effectively but we also hope that it gives you an avenue to use your gifts to glorify GOD through ATN and that it adds a whole new layer of face-to-face communication so that everyone has the opportunity to know what is going on with All Things New.