Educator of the Year Nomination
It is my pleasure to read this letter which was sent by the Session of our church after our stated meeting in June.
We, the session of Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church, proudly nominate our Director of Christian Education, Vivian M. Hare, for the Presbytery of Coastal Carolina Educator of the Year Award for 2007.
Our church has been growing steadily for several years, and in 2005, we were just on the cusp of reaching the “ceiling” where new families who were visiting, seeking to join a church, were finding our existing ministerial staff—which consisted of one pastor—overstrained and undereducated in family programming. When in the Fall of 2005 Ms. Hare became available, our Personnel and Christian Education Committees created a job description for a position our church had never previously employed in its 63-year history: Director of Christian Education.
Vivian’s philosophy of Christian Education involves a direct link between Christian Education and Mission. She founded a group for 3rd-5th graders called Helping Hands, who meet weekly for fellowship and activities where they learn about mission, peacemaking, and service through projects for the community (such as our local food pantry) and the world (such as NetWorkers, supplying mosquito nets to help prevent mothers in Africa from contracting malaria).
Vivian started monthly church gatherings where members meet to knit and crochet baby caps to send to under-equipped hospitals throughout the world. Her impetus finally led to our church’s first mission trip, which various church members had requested over the years. She founded Second Serving, which uses programs at Montreat and at Little Chapel on the Boardwalk as models for collecting unused food from the thousands of visitors to Carolina Beach in the summer. And she instituted a “Global Gifts Festival” for our church to offer goods from the Heifer Project, Ten Thousand Villages and Fair Trade coffee. While similar programs at other, larger churches have justly appeared in news media outlets, Vivian has been resolutely and without fanfare originating and orchestrating the exact same programs here in Carolina Beach.
Ms. Hare has administered two confirmation classes in our church. She directs our children’s choir, which had ceased to exist before she joined us. She instituted a weekly Catechism Class using the latest PC(USA) children’s catechism. She initiated a full slate of Wednesday evening programs involving all ages and households, which has been a spectacular success.
Through all these many projects and programs, Vivian has worked tirelessly to involve an ever-wider range of church members, bringing in and assimilating new families and finding meaningful ways for every member to participate, contribute, and volunteer.
All this and she is also our choir director and organist—and has the burden of being the pastor’s wife!
Our church continues to grow in faith through both Vivian’s direct teaching and her innovative and creative administration of our education program, and we continue to grow in strength of membership as new members of all ages—young families, youth, older adults; singles, couples—find in our church an overall Christian Education program that meets their needs for spiritual growth and active church life. It is with gratitude to God for the providential circumstances of Vivian’s arrival as our D.C.E. that we nominate Vivian Hare as Presbytery Educator of the Year.
Signed,
The Session of Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church
It is my pleasure and honor to announce on behalf of the presbytery that this Saturday at the event in Lumberton, Vivian will be honored as one of the two recipients of this year’s Presbytery Educator of the Year award.
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