Announcing Rebekah & Shu-Li’s Staff Transition

Dear Mission Cincinnati Community,

This past Sunday, I announced that as of March 1st, 2025, Rebekah Burkhardt will be stepping off of staff, and Shu-Li Cheah, our current church administrator, will take over Rebekah’s former role as our new Worship Director.

I’m writing to share more about the context, process, and discernment that led to this transition.

First off, a bit about the Big Picture.

For the past 4 years, The Mission has grown numerically by about 20% each year.  This growth is exciting fruit of our growing love for Jesus and each other.  It also requires us to mature organizationally and increase our ministry capacity to shepherd well the people God is sending to us.  This past summer, our Vestry initiated a staff task audit that sought to identify current staff responsibilities and future staffing needs.  We concluded that we needed additional hours in administration, worship ministry, children’s ministry, and hospitality. 

In the Fall, we shared these needs with the congregation, and the ensuring pledgeship process saw an outpouring of faith-filled generosity that has allowed us to add more than $70,000.00 to our 2025 ministry budget.  As a result, this year we will:

1)       Double our current compensated administrative hours

2)       Increase compensated worship hours by 50%

3)       Outsource bookkeeping & accounting

4)       Increase all staff compensation closer to median salaries

5)       Fund the launch of a new ministry offering for older elementary children

Second, how does this relate to Rebekah & Shu-Li?

In early 2024, Rebekah shared with me that while she loved leading our worship team, she lacked the capacity to give this role the time it needed.  We began to plan for her transition off of staff.  A few months later, Rebekah shared that she believed Shu-Li could be a great fit to take over the role.  Rebekah and Shu-Li began discussions this summer while I was on Sabbatical.  When I returned, the 3 of us continued the discernment process together.  We officially offered Shu-Li the position in fall of 2024, and on Christmas Eve 2024, Shu-Li accepted the new position.

Shu-Li will be able to devote 50% more time to the worship role than Rebekah was able to give which will further develop the excellent musical worship culture Rebekah has been building.  We will also immediately begin the search for a new Operations Manager staff position, funded for 25 hours/week, compared to Shu-Li’s old role that was funded for 10-15 hours/week.

We will celebrate and bless Rebekah & Shu-Li’s transitions in worship on Sunday, February 23rd.  Shu-Li will continue to schedule Sunday morning volunteers until our new operations manager is in place.  The rest of her responsibilities will be absorbed by current staff, delegated to new volunteer leaders, or outsourced. 

I am so so grateful for Rebekah’s years of leading our worship team!  She has laid a foundation of increasingly strong congregational singing, fostered a culture of growing love and friendship amongst our church musicians, and led with an inspirational passion for musical worship that is both rooted and spiritually alive.   I am likewise excited for how the Lord will work through Shu-Li’s incredible musical expertise, administrative leadership, and ministry heart to continue to build on the foundation Rebekah has laid and move us forward.  Praise God for His provision and grace in all these things!

Please pray for Rebekah, Shu-Li, and our staff during this time of transition.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me!

May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you and give you His peace!

Fr. William