Haven't written for basically two years. Among the reasons, I was an Elder in my church when the co-pastor and his wife were killed in a traffic accident. With everything going on there wasn't much time to write, plus my mind was on other things, for example, last summer my son got married.

I am now serving on the Scofield Wellman Public Library board. Its been interesting though I have to admit I haven't done much besides go to the meetings. At the beginning of the summer we met with a consultant provided by the State of Iowa to do some long range planning. Part of the process was to identify a variety of community members who could provide feedback about services and programs they would like the library to provide. We were to come up with a mix of long term residents, people who have just moved to Wellman, old, young, men, women, professional, students, home-school families, some minority's (yes there are a few people of color in Wellman) business people and representatives from the churches and other agencies in town. The consultant met with these people in two meetings. They agreed on three broad ideas for what we should focus on for the next few years to keep the library relevant and useful to Wellman.

What I found intriguing was my experiences of seeing this process work in churches. The process was very similar with one huge exception. The church process focused on members and those who attended the church and what their ideas were. I dont' know for sure but I would guess some of the folks involved in the library process have never been in the Wellman Library. I wondered what would happen if Kalona Mennonite or any other church would identify a representative group of community members who aren't part of the church to ask them what role they would like the church to play in the community. Would they focus on new carpet, paint and different musical instruments? Would they suggest a bunch of new programs? Or would they see the church as largely irrelevant to the community and beyond hope? Maybe someday I can convince a church to try the process and see what happens. Just a thought.