2025 Ministry Review: Highlights and Hopes

https://www.immanuelspokane.org/s/Immanuel-Ministries-Fact-Sheet-2025.pdf

Leslie McAuley – Associate Pastor

2024 Highlights

  • Participating in Sunday morning services

  • Participating with anything involving the church, such as, Pastries in the Park and the Meal Team

  • Lead Morning Prayers on Monday and attend the rest of the week to pray for those attending Immanuel

  • Meet with people after church on Sundays to get to know them and to be known

  • Have people over for dinner (to get to know them and to be known)

  • Preach/worship as needed

  • Be present at various events

  • Continue to have a cup of coffee with people who attend Immanuel (to get to know and be known)

  • Assist as Church Administrator, as needed

  • Convene and Facilitate an LTG

  • Lead the staff/leadership team retreat

  • Lead staff meetings & coordinate events for the staff

  • Attended the Race & Faith Conference (in preparation of Immanuel hosting one) 

  • Attend the ECC PACNW Annual Conference

  • Attend ECC Midwinter

  • Preached at Portland Covenant and The Gathering House

2025 Hopes

  • Hold an Anti-Racism Discipleship class or a Race & Faith Conference

  • Participate in other ways to make people feel welcomed.

  • Have staff attend Midwinter and Inhabit Conference

 

Armando Sánchez Qualls - Worship Director

2024 Highlights

  • We began hosting worship team gatherings with the goal of connecting, communicating our purpose within the church, and sharing ideas. We brainstormed how we could grow musically, spiritually, and artistically.

  • We grew our team by more than seven new individuals, each with their own gifts and perspectives.

  • We incorporated multilingual worship in three different languages: English, Spanish, and Samoan.

  • We collaborated with the Shadle Park worship team to lead both congregations in a unified service.

  • We expanded the band’s repertoire, including songs from different genres, cultures, and faith traditions.

2025 Hopes

  • To integrate new forms of artistic worship, for example painting, dance, sign language, additional languages, and more.

  • To start writing our own music and songs of praise.

  • To collaborate musically with more churches within the Spokane community.

  • To host a quarterly worship team gathering with the purpose of fostering team cohesion and communication.

  • To organize regular worship nights for our congregation and friends.

 

Ken Brown – Technology and Communications

2024 Highlights

  • We substantially updated our church website and social media feeds.

  • We streamlined the process for processing and posting sermon recordings on YouTube, the website, and Facebook.

  • We experimented with YouTube shorts for several months, which were quite successful, though also quite a bit of effort. We might return to that again at some point.

2025 Hopes

  • We still hope to see a broader range of contributors willing to share their thoughts and reflections through the church blog.

  • We continue to struggle with occasionally unreliability from our cameras, mics and wifi, which we hope to be able to resolve.

  • We continue to have robust engagement online, which we hope to see continue to grow, despite our growing frustration with Facebook/Meta. 

 

Michelle Areta, Simon and Siniva Menso - Children's Ministry

2024 Highlights

  • We followed a strategic plan for topics and themes to help facilitate our kids' spiritual growth and help them to know the teachings of Jesus

  • We instituted Justice Journey for Kids as a supplemental curriculum focused on equality and anti-racism

  • We completed two different service projects with our kids, getting them involved in ministering to the community

  • We celebrated move-ups with many of our kids going into new classes and trying new things

  • We processed 11 new volunteers and were able to give some of our long-time volunteers a much-needed break

  • We put together a Christmas program that involved all our children, ages PreK-8th grade

  • We added an additional leader to our team (Cecelia McMullen) who is helping with preparing lesson plans for the Pre-K to 1st grade class

2025 Hopes

  • Maintaining the structure, we've already instituted (Justice Journey for Kids, service projects, performances, etc.). 

  • Onboard more leaders so some of our volunteers who do 2+ Sundays downstairs can have a break

  • Dream: Find an individual or individuals who could take over the children's/youth ministry as a director or pastor, allowing Michelle, Siniva, and Simon to move into more of a volunteer/supporting role.

Youth Ministry

2024 Highlights

  • We offered several youth events, including a day retreat at the lake (Planned by Jessica Johnson; thank you!)

  • We put together a Christmas program that involved all our children, ages PreK-8th grade

  • We added an additional leader to our team (Tim Evans) who is helping with preparing lesson plans for the middle school class

2025 Highlights

  • Partnering with Shadle Park to re-do our youth spaces so that they better serve our middle and high schoolers

  • More consistent events/programming for our youth - specifically our high schoolers

  • Identifying any congregation members who would be interested in volunteering to support this ministry. Our team was already small but it just got reduced as a few of our leaders' family situations have changed. 

 

Rodney McAuley - Bridge Project

2024 Highlights

  • Financial Improvement Plan --- briefed with the LT in July

  • Update and review of the Strategic Plan --- Brief with the LT in September

  • I've been working on them before and since those two meetings. Details not appropriate according to parameters for tomorrow.

2025 Hopes

  • I will be getting my ECC license by June. This will allow me to access, to a much greater degree, all of the various resources (people, funding, etc.) than what has been the case to this point. My role as a "missionary to the city" flows from Immanuel to the city, to the conference, to the denomination, and beyond......

  • Three specific initiatives I will be working on are--

  • pursuing a "cluster" of local ECC pastors

  • convening monthly, city-wide prayer gatherings which go beyond barriers

  • elevating and centering prayer at Immanuel

 

Bennett Pope – Leadership Resident/Church Planter in Residence

2024 Highlights

  • Began with my first trip to Midwinter, our denomination’s annual conference. At Midwinter, Rob and I met with denominational staff and began conversations around what a potential church plant in Spokane might look like. As these conversations have continued through the year, I have struggled to gain traction. It feels like we’ve been casting sparks on a pile of tinder, but nothing is catching.

2025 Hopes

  • As we move into 2025, we will need to discern how best to move forward. My residency is scheduled to wrap up this summer, and I look forward to gaining more clarity about my future, whether that is with Immanuel, somewhere else in Spokane, or somewhere else entirely. I covet your prayers!

  • Immanuel continues to see terrific levels of engagement with our Life Together Groups. We have over 100 adults involved in LTGs! If you are not in an LTG and would like to join one, I’d love to connect you with a group. As our church continues to grow, we will need our number of groups to grow as well. If you’d be interested in starting a new group, even if that sounds intimidating or you have some questions, I’d love to start that conversation with you!