With COVID-19 generally disrupting church life for the last year, the Nominating Committee had not had the opportunity to find Elder and Deacon candidates to fill the terms that needed to be filled at the end of 2020. With the approval of Presbytery, however, we asked that those whose terms expired last December continue to serve until we were able to return to live worship and the Nominating Committee could go back to work. As usual for our church, most of them said yes.

When our Senior Ministries Elder resigned in mid-2020, Session began talking about combining Senior Ministries with another committee. When our Growth Elder resigned at the end of 2020 those discussions got more serious. In May Session decided to combine Senior Ministries and Church Growth into a new committee, Congregational Growth and Care and Alicia Kitzman agreed to serve as the Elder leading that new committee. Alicia is still in the process of defining exactly what the new committee will be doing and would welcome input from members of the congregation. A list of our Elders and their committee assignments can be found on our Elders page.

Three of our Deacons reached the end of their maximum six consecutive years of service at the end of 2020. In addition, two Deacons resigned at the end of 2020.

In reviewing our parish structure we noted that the Old St. George parish had only five members as did Ivins. We also determined that five members of Dixie Downs/Santa Clara parish lived nearer to St. George than to Santa Clara and that five members lived in Santa Clara, proper. To make our parish structure a bit more efficient (and even out some of the work load) Session and new Deacon Moderator Vicky Westland agreed to combine the members of Dixie Downs/Santa Clara who lived closer to St. George into a new Old St. George/Dixie Downs parish and the members living in Santa Clara into a new Santa Clara/Ivins parish. A list of our Deacons and their parishes can be found on our Deacons page.

The Nominating Committee for the remainder of 2021 will be moderated by Eric Westland, representing Session, with Vicky Westland representing the Deacons and Scott Florence, Nancy Higgins and Anne Patten representing the congregation. They will be focused on finding Elders and Deacons for 2022.

Thanks to everyone who has served and welcome to the new members of our church leadership for 2021.