Update on Background Teams

I am so excited that our Background Teams are finally coming together! Of all of the changes Highlands Emmaus has implemented during the past couple of years, I believe with all my heart that the formation of Background Teams has the greatest potential to make a positive impact on our community. These teams of Emmaus members will work in tandem with the Conference Room Teams and will be every bit as vital to the success of our walk weekends.

Any community member is always encouraged and welcomed to show up and serve in the background during Walks. Hear me when I say if you've been on an Emmaus Walk we still want and need you at Emory & Henry in July, whether you're officially on the Background Team or not!

But also having volunteers who are intentionally committed to certain background tasks during the weekends will 1) allow more people to be involved in our Walks than ever before, 2) make sure we have all of our bases covered, and 3) become the first step in the ideal of "progressive servanthood."

Peggy Lootens is heading up the Background Team for the Women's Walk and Bill Ogle is heading up the Background Team for the Men's Walk. Here is an encouraging excerpt from an email Peggy sent earlier this month:

We need 10 or so designated background Chairpersons for each walk. These Chairs will have a “teaming” event (or events) sometime in June to bond, brainstorm, and finalize as a Background Team. Each of these can have as many as needed from the community to get the task to done for the weekend. There is a list of community members who have never teamed; we need to get this list into the hands of the chairs. The board will help identify community people to help.

We will need to work with Susan and Vince, and/or an ALD contact to develop a schedule for background jobs. Johnna Hernandez has been assigned this liaison task for the Women’s Walk. We are trying to cover as much as possible with background persons so that in the future, we can have fewer ALDs on the team. These ALDs need to be able to concentrate on the conference room and Pilgrim needs.

These are who we have on board so far:

-Connie O’Dell will continue to collect gift agape and have it sorted for background people to distribute for meals, conference room tables and beds. It sort of worked last year for the Women’s Walk, but we can make it work better. We will need Connie’s input as we plan.

-Crystal Davidson will continue to gather letter agape (from other communities) to display in the conference room. She is also on board to help be our board rep to communicate the agape needs. We also need to consider how we want to do the snack agape tables.

-Rick Guthrie will do the final Take Down on Sunday of the Women’s Walk, and whatever else he can for the WW.

-Amber Fiedler has volunteered to fill the kitchen boxes. She will also type out prayer requests from Sponsor’s Hour for the Prayer Room Cross.

-Amber has volunteered to do the computer background needs for the WW, since Mary Burns is on the team.

-Bill Everett has been, and will continue providing suggestions from his wealth of experience in the Tidewater Community.

-Dale Dietz needs to be part of this to contribute from his experience of many years as background volunteer.

That’s a start. Please respond with corrections and suggestions.

DeColores,
Peggy

July will be here before we know it, folks. Remember, it takes an entire Emmaus community to hold a Walk. How can you help?