14 Oct Bishop Whipple’s Report to the ELT

The Executive Leadership Team met October 11-12 in Huntington, Ind. The ELT, the highest governing body between meetings of the US National Conference, meets twice a year to handle business. There are 13 members: Bishop Phil Whipple (chairman), 8 persons elected by the National Conference, and 4 persons appointed by the ELT itself.

The bishop and the various directors all presented one-page bulleted reports. Here are some items from Bishop Phil Whipple’s written and verbal report to the ELT:

• Bishop Whipple, often accompanied by his wife Sandy, traveled over 44,000 miles during his first year as bishop. He has been in 87 of our approximately 200 churches in the United States.
• The church in Lansing, Mich., will close October 24. All assets will be given to a Lansing restart project headed by Tim Flickinger, former senior pastor of Fowlerville UB (Fowlerville, Mich.). It is not known yet if the building will be sold.
• Andy Sikora has begun planting a new church in Berea, Ohio.
• Another new work is Eternal Waters, located in southern Ohio. They report decisions and baptisms. This self-supporting work requires no funds from the denomination. Their founder, Allen Layne, is employed fulltime and takes no salary.
• The denomination now owns the property of Fountain Hills Community Church (Fountain Hills, Ariz.). That church closed in the fall of 2009. The former congregation had outstanding loans with both the denomination and Global Ministries. The building underwent some significant repairs and is now being leased to an independent congregation called Four Peaks Church. Bishop Whipple will visit Fountain Hills in January 2011 to meet with the Four Peaks elder team.
• Two churches were closed: Central UB (Rohersville, Md.), and Convoy (Convoy, Ohio).
• Felida Christian Fellowship, our church in Vancouver, Wash., withdrew from the denomination. They are becoming a satellite campus for Summit View Church, a megachurch in Vancouver.
• “We must do a better job of developing leaders among our pastors and help them to raise up leaders in their congregations.”
• “I believe that God has great things in store for us as a body of churches together. Let’s lift up our eyes and look to the God who is more than able to accomplish more than I can dream of. Let’s move forward in faith believing that he is going to do a new thing, with or without us, but he delights in doing it in the hearts of those who are willing to trust him fully.”