Dear family of Good Shepherd,

Six years ago I accepted a call to serve as Youth Director to Good Shepherd. I came and worshiped with the community and fell swiftly in love with the unassuming nature and authentic faith of this band of believers. Inside me I felt the Holy Spirit calling and leading me. I felt God bringing new things to life inside of me that would prepare me for this service and leadership within his Church. Serving this congregation has been a blessing in the truest sense of the word. It has been a time filled with love, grace, laughter, and delight in growing together in Christ. I have grown in inexplicable ways through the loving hand of God at work in this community as we struggle together to become more and more like the people God created us to be.

Recently I have felt God at work again, bringing a new thing to life within me. Through our reading of the scripture, our community service, and mission trips I have felt my heart growing for the poor. I have been taken out of my comfort zone and have fallen in love with God in his most disarming disguises. I have struggled with what it might look like to truly trust that God's kingdom of peace is here and now and is present in even the least of his children. I have felt the indignity and confusion of my own indifference towards the injustices of our time and wondered what my part in working towards God's vision for a just and grace-filled world might look like.

It is with humility and in great gratitude that I have tendered my resignation at Good Shepherd in the trust that God is leading me in the next steps in my journey. I have been accepted to Luther Seminary's Master of Arts program and will begin studying there in September of this year. I hope that Luther will be a place where I can learn much about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, how to serve the poor, and to counteract the systems that nurture injustice. I pray that Luther will be a community which will continue to cultivate good things within me - that it will be a place that, like Good Shepherd, is loving, forgiving, supportive, encouraging, and centered in God's love and grace.

In the past six years I have been truly humbled by the love of this community. I have seen the awesome power of God at work in his people and been transformed by the gentle touch of God's love as it lives in and amongst his followers. I cannot thank each of you enough for the opportunity to work with your amazing young people and to be a partner with you in ministry. I will continue to pray that God work through each of you in amazing and unexpected ways as the Almighty brings his life to fullness in all of creaation. Know that God has blessed me through you.

In deepest love and heartfelt gratitude,
Mark Hannan