It’s summer in New England, the time of year when so many of us are reminded why we live here. We hope you all get out and find some time to enjoy all that our region has to offer – as long as you make it back to church on Sunday. ;-)
This is a busy time in the life of our church, so we wanted to provide an update on some key discussions that have been happening and next steps wherever we know them.
First, the Elders have been listening to our staff’s and congregation’s input about how to manage our preaching opportunities and calendar in this season. Many of you have spoken into our Teaching Team’s preaching strengths and the desire to continue to hear from this team each Sunday in the year ahead. We agree with you!
We have affirmed our staff Teaching Team and have asked Tim Ghali to lead the team and the preaching strategy until we have a new Senior Pastor. Tim will remain part of the teaching rotation that will include many pastoral staff bringing us the Word of God in our weekly sermons. He will now be our Interim Pastor of Teaching and Discipleship leading the Teaching Team and regularly attend Elder meetings to advise the board in support of the teaching model. Tim has led our Teaching Team since 2012 and we want to affirm his work, excellent preaching and leadership.
This teaching team model has been a key part of a meaningful and prayer-led process for Grace Chapel for many years, and this is an affirmation of Tim and this staff team that serve us so well. We also appreciate all the positive feedback from the congregation on the capabilities of our staff to serve us all in preaching the gospel. If you want to hear more, this team and the process it was highlighted by Tim Ghali at our Annual Celebration and can be found at https://www.grace.org/2025annualcelebration// at the 50 minute mark of that meeting.
Almost 900 of you participated in our recent congregational survey conducted by our consulting partner, VitalChurch Ministry. We wanted to hear from as many people as we could and were thankful that so many of you responded. The team at VitalChurch Ministry is pulling together all the information they’ve gathered from the survey and their conversations with many Grace Chapel people and will present it to all of us on August 10th after services at 12:30pm. We will have seating in Lexington and will stream and record it for anyone that would like to watch. We look forward to hearing their feedback and recommendations so that we can continue to grow and serve through Grace Chapel.
Our Annual Celebration was held on June 22nd and our members have voted to approve all motions including our office nominees and budget for Fiscal 2026. Thank you for your participation in this important step in our church governance. All the results, the meeting recording and the annual report can be found at www.grace.org/annualcelebration.
The Board of Elders continue to pray through this season of discernment. We wanted to make sure to listen to you and seek guidance from our loving God as we take our next steps as a large and impactful church here in greater Boston. We are walking with careful steps and will leverage the feedback from VitalChurch Ministries, other churches, and church organizations that are helping all of us think through what our next steps should be.
In parallel, we have begun working on the logistics to enable the board to establish and approve the formation a new senior pastor search committee by late September. We realize these delays may not be easy for everyone but we wish to move forward prayerfully and with careful progress.
If you’d like to continue receiving these updates, please subscribe to our Elders Updates email using the link below.
Lexington
Sunday Worship Services
9:00am, 9am Courtyard, 11:00am
Address
59 Worthen Rd
Lexington, MA 02421
Contact
781-862-6499
