NewSong Board of
Elders
Minutes of January
21, 2007 Meeting
The NewSong Board of Elders met on Sunday afternoon, January 21, 2007
from 4:00 to 5:15pm at the Church office. All Elders were present including:
Steve Jackson, Brian Brown, Brent Orr, Curt Sloyer, and our newly elected Elders
for their first meeting: Jerry Cauley, Ed Densmore, and Vicki Eitel. Handouts
included a meeting agenda, a copy of our church bylaws, and a directory listing
all the Elders contact information (copies on file).
After opening with prayer Pastor Steve began the meeting by welcoming the
three new Elders to the Board and by explaining the background of the Board of
Elders and the thinking behind why this particular type governance was chosen.
He explained that some boards are set up to be primarily administrative bodies
with nothing but administrative tasks to perform with the spiritual aspects of
those issues being seldom considered. Other boards are set up and seem to be “so
heavenly minded that they are no earthly good” to quote an old saying. Hence,
nothing gets done. At NewSong we try to strike a balance between these two
poles, understanding that our role and tasks as Elders would primarily be
described as “spiritual” but allowing that the Elders are technically the Board
of Directors for the corporation that is our church and we do have some
administrative issues (facilities issues, staffing, budgets, etc…) that must be
attended to and who better to do it than our spiritual leaders? Since this is
our first meeting of the year and since we are gaining three new Elders,
several administrative issues need to be attended to at this meeting. Steve’s
point in saying all this was to simply explain that most of our meetings will not be consumed with administrative matters
as this meeting will. After explaining this we began working through some
corporate issues including:
Note: some of the items above need to be approved by a vote of the membership which will be done in February at a regular church business meeting.
The next order of business was a discussion of the role of an Elder at NewSong and the role of this board as the governing body of the church. We did this by reading the applicable sections of the bylaws together (see Article IV). After a brief discussion and time allowed for any clarification everyone agreed they thought they had a good grasp of the expectations involved.
Pastor Steve then gave his Pastor’s Report, both for last month (Dec. 2006), and for 2006 as a
whole. Since this report had been previously been emailed to the board Steve
did not go over it line by line. He summed up his report by saying he sensed a positive
momentum swing at NewSong as we entered the fall of 2006 and that he has high
expectations for the year just begun. The Elders stated they had received his
report and read it. The report is included below in its entirety.
Pastor’s Report
December 2006
December at NewSong was a good month. The month got off to a great start with a church-wide work day on Dec. 2nd where we had over 25 people turn out to clean, paint, decorate, throw-out things, clean out the trailer and downstairs storage room, etc… The next Friday night we had a group go to a Gwinnett Gladiators hockey game (one of our first fellowship activities planned and implemented by our new fellowship area leaders Gene and Rene’ Ellington). On Saturday Dec. 9th a large group of our members took over 100 Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes from NewSong to the Samaritan’s Purse warehouse in Norcross. The group worked that morning from 9-12 packing pallets and also took $900 for shipping the boxes from our church. On Sunday, Dec. 10th we held Elder elections and Jerry Cauley, Ed Densmore, and Vicki Eitel were elected as our newest Elders. Other events in December included a youth lock-in for our boys, a “Birthday Party for Jesus” for our children, and a Youth Christmas party. Our sermon series for December was titled, “Christmas 2006, Holy Days or Holidays?” and we talked about ways to make the Advent and Christmas season a more holy one. We had good worship attendance throughout the month including over 200 present at our Christmas Eve Candlelight Service. Vicki Eitel closed the year for us preaching a wonderful sermon on the 31st where she challenged us to “bear Christ into the world” even as Mary bore him.
Calendar 2006
Looking back on 2006 as a whole, I would have to say it
was one of the most interesting and unusual ones we’ve had as a church. Without
rehashing the year in great detail, we had some major changes: In worship, Sandra Allen stepped down as
our worship leader during 2006, which presented a major challenge to the
church, and especially to the Praise Band. Fortunately both the church and the
praise band have been resilient. We still don’t know where God is leading us in
worship, but we’re striving to be obedient and open to the Lord’s leading. In discipleship we saw a renewed
commitment to Sunday School (all ages) and to Bible Study, with the major
changes there being that I am now teaching an adult Sunday School class in
addition to the Eitels on the Sunday School side which has doubled our adult SS
attendance, and as for Bible Study, we moved our activity night there to Sunday
Night and reinstated our meal with a lot of success. Attendance has grown and
our Fall Bible study (Romans) was one of the best we’ve had yet as far as
participation and interaction. In the fellowship
area, we got new leaders in 2006, and the Ellingtons have already been
providing plenty of opportunities for fellowship. Even before the Ellingtons
took over we had some great fellowship events in 2006 including a fall outing
to the Sawnee Mountain Preserve and several church-wide meals and events. We
also started a successful “dinner club” type ministry in the Fall
called F.E.A.S.T. where families were grouped together to share meals on a
regular basis. This ministry seemed to help people in the church get to know
one another better. In our ministry
area, B.J. Fisher remained our leader and continued his excellent work. We again
served meals at The Place on a regular basis and had a few other outreach
activities in 2006. We also took two mission trips last year, with 23 people
going to
Looking Ahead
I am feeling very good about our momentum, direction, and attitude as we enter 2007. There is still a lot of work to be done. And certainly I wish some things were different. I wish we owned our own facility. I wish we had higher worship attendance and stronger children’s and youth programs. I wish we had a really strong worship team to lead us. I wish I was a better preacher. I want you to know that I pray for this church every day; I pray for each one of you as Elders, our other leaders, and I pray for our members and attenders. I pray for clarity and passion about God’s unique vision for our congregation, for numerical growth, outward focus, spiritual depth, and for deepening relationships. I pray for God to stretch our faith and for Him to call us forth into the future He has for us. My prayer is that with each new day we’ll move closer to what God has in mind for us as we follow his call on our lives. I hope you are praying hard for NewSong as well. Prayer is our best weapon in the battle we are engaged in.
As another new year dawns I thank you for your continued confidence in my leadership as your pastor and I pray I will be able to meet God’s expectations and your expectations for me. Please hold me accountable and let’s keep the communication channels clear and ongoing as we move forward into God’s great future here.
Respectfully,
Steve Jackson
Other Items from the
Pastor’s Report
Average YTD attendance through December jumped by four
person from the previous month to a new total average
attendance of 145. We had a low attendance Sunday on the 10th
of 127 and a high of over 200 on Christmas Eve night. 145 is the exact same
average attendance we ended 2005 with.
Current membership statistics as of the end of December remained unchanged with 54 member families, 95 full members, 75 preparatory members and 28 constituent members for a total of 198. Of course we lost a beloved member in January, Diane Allen, but that will be reflected in next month’s report.
Financially speaking, December was an excellent month, one of our best ever. Revenues for the month were $35,956 and expenses were $20,649 with revenues exceeding expenses by $15,307 for the month. Our 2006 final numbers were revenues of $269.243 and expenses of $254,164 leaving us $15,079 “to the good.” Our Fidelity account balance at the end of December stands at $14,280. We made $648 in dividends on our balance with Fidelity in 2006 and despite the lean summer months we never once had to dip into this account to pay current expenses.
As for our checking account, on
Dec. 31st we had an in-house balance of $28,569. We were also
holding in our checking account $6,746 that was not used for El Salvador last
year, but was part of our 10% tithe (the checks were written but never given to
Enlace as agreed with team leader Dave Allen). We were also holding $8,558 of
We will be moving some of this money into our Fidelity account during January so it can at least be earning interest.
As for the Hoover Fund, we had collected $12,558. towards the van by year end. Just before the year ended we wrote a check for $4,000 for the van which left $8,558. Since that time through the Benefit Concert and through other donations received as a result of the newspaper article and word-of-mouth we have collected another $4,455 (with checks continuing to come in). This brings our total as of Jan. 18, 2007 to $17,014. We have distributed some of these funds ($1500 for misc. expenses and $192.80 in van repairs) to Tina. We will keep you updated on these funds as they are received and paid out.
The meeting continued with a discussion of the following old and new business items.
Old Business:
Feb. – Brian Brown
Mar. – Jerry Cauley
Apr. – Ed Densmore
May – Vicki Eitel
June – Brent Orr
July – Curt Sloyer
Aug. – Brian Brown
Sept. – Jerry Cauley
Oct. – Ed Densmore
Nov. – Vicki Eitel
Dec. – Brent Orr
New Business:
There being no further business before the Board, Pastor Steve closed with prayer and the meeting was adjourned.
The next meeting of the Board of Elders is scheduled for Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 4pm at the church office.