Earlier this year, we made some shifts in responsibility to some of our year-round staff. This is helping us work more effectively and lining up the gifts of our talented staff with their positions.

Charlene Rineer, who has served most recently as our summer assistant director and year-round administrative assistant, has taken on the role of program director. Charlene will continue to help lead our summer staff in their roles, particularly our village leaders who oversee program. She will also take on a few summer administrative tasks that our executive director did prior. In addition, Charlene now has more responsibility for helping us manage the Synod Youth Initiative. She is helping the youth stay on task and doing some of the behind the scenes work on organizing events. Some of the smaller administrative tasks she did in the non-summer months have shifted to our executive director. She continues to help us with our mass postal mailings.

Last summer, Isabel Vitale served as our marketing assistant. She remained on staff in a year-round role as a marketing specialist, primarily overseeing our social media and developing marketing strategy. Isabel has immense gifts and experience in marketing and “upped our game” considerably last summer. Hopefully you’ve noticed the increase in our social media posts on both Facebook and Instagram. In today’s world, this is an important part of our outreach to our communities, and we are grateful for the work Isabel continues to do in this area.

Since Associate Director Jim Vitale now has less marketing and youth management, this frees up his time to take point on CaTALYST, our new faith community. He works with our young adult leadership team the development and execution of this exciting new endeavor. He is also working with the synod’s Director of Evangelical Mission Sue Ellen Spotts on a potential second new worshipping community.

Part of our on-going work, particularly with our board’s new strategic plan, is to look at staff responsibilities and see where we need to adjust work more efficiently and reach new people in our ministry. We are confident these changes will help us do just that!