Yes, I know. I haven’t been blogging much lately. We’ll see what happens in the weeks ahead.

Today was Report Day, the day when pastors throughout the district come together and submit their statistical reports and consult with the District Superindendent. The actual reporting has changed a lot since I first started out.

First, I used to have to do all the paper work myself. While my church had a part time secretary, pretty much all she did was run copies of the bulletin on the mimeograph machine. Now I have a secretary who does most of the record keeping for me. It’s awesome!

Second, we filled out the forms by hand. Now we  use Dove, an online program. It does the computing and summarizing for us. Since we’d paid all our apportionments by the cut off date in December (Yeah church!) my report today was very simple. The auditor just compared my printout (from Dove) with Dove on his laptop (we didn’t have those when I started out either), and then I signed the report.

Finally, I had my annual consultation report with the DS. Bill Taylor, the same DS I had back in the 90s when I was in another church, is our new DS. We’ve known each other for a good while, so we were able to have a productive conversation about ministry, here in Pittsburg, in the Texas Conference, and across the connection. Bill’s calm, and easy to talk with (unlike some DS’s I’ve heard of).

While waiting our turn, we pastors get to visit with each other and catch up on family news & events.