Personnel Chair, Mark Forbes brought the great news on behalf of the Personnel Committee at the end of worship service that Taylor Miskel was offered and accepted a full-time position as Interim Youth Minister. This move comes with a contractual six month offer that begins August 1st with an end date of January 31st, 2023. The other really good news in this action is that the move has zero impact in the 2022 budget. All funding results in a current neutral budget position for the balance of this fiscal calendar year 12/31/22. Aside from using the remaining residual unused 2022 budget for the Youth, this six-month full-time position is made possible with the support and additional funding from the Youth Committee, Children’s Committee, Community Engagement Committee, and Senior Adult Committee. The support from Stewardship Chair and funding from these various committees is a strong indication of the one accord and unanimous support of our Youth Ministry at Westwood. The Thrive gift we received in late 2021 was allocated to all these various committees with an intention of the donor that Westwood would benefit during our current fiscal calendar year of 2022. We thank all of these committees in their action vote to support the full-time Youth Position during this period of time.
Taylor’s UNC Chaplain Residency assignment ended on June 30th,and allowed her to commit full-time to this position. Matt Miskel will continue to support Taylor in this role as we move forward. We thank both Taylor and Matt in their call to the part-time Interim Youth position back on February 1 along with all the great positive momentum they have established during this time with our active Youth. God has been good to us in His gift of ministry from Taylor and Matt and we look forward to all that He can accomplish through Taylor as she leads our Youth activities in the coming months.