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NewSong Board of Elders

Minutes of February 10, 2008 Meeting

 

The Board of Elders of NewSong Community Church held its February meeting on Sunday, February 10, 2008 from 4:00 to 6:00pm at the church. Elders present included Linda Blanchard, Jerry Cauley, Vicki Eitel, and Steve Jackson. Brian Brown was absent.

 

The meeting began with Pastor Steve asking if there were any questions about the Pastor’s Report which was emailed earlier to the Board.

A.    Discussion of no Ash Wednesday service, Steve Jackson’s decision not to hold the service was based on poor attendance in recent years at this service.

B.     Financial contributions are down for the month of January, in part due to one service being cancelled due to weather during the month.

C.     The average attendance decline was noted, discussion was held as to why. Not sure why this is happening.

D.    Question: Is the second service necessary with the decline in attendance?

 

The following are highlights from the Pastor’s Report:

 

Pastor’s Report

January was an “up and down” month at NewSong. On the “up” side, we held a well-attended Leadership Huddle on the 12th to get all our leaders up to speed. We also hired a new Director of Student Ministry, Justin and Kristyn Woelk. We also had two new families join the church, and we had a lot of fun at our “Friday Night Jam” on Jan. 25th. On the “down” side, we lost a wonderful member when Bob Allen succumbed to cancer on January 15th, and snowy weather caused us to cancel services on the 20th. A sort of “mixed blessing” was on January 9th when I held a membership class with seven people in attendance, but only one family of the four families present joined after the class.

 

Other Items

Our Average YTD worship attendance for January was 134. Attendance for the three services we held in January was 129, 142, and 132. Our decreasing attendance continues to disturb me. Looking back at the last two years, we averaged 159 in January 2006 and 148 in January 2007. I am not sure what is going on but we are definitely shrinking.

 

Current membership statistics as of the end of November reflect the addition of two families, the Woelks and the Wilsons, who both joined on January 13th. As mentioned above we also lost one family with the death of Bob Allen. We now have 60 member families, 103 full members, 45 preparatory members and 69 constituent members for a total of 217. 

 

Financially speaking, revenues for the month were $17,654 and expenses were $21,880 with expenses exceeding income by $4,226 for the month. As of the end of January the balance in our Fidelity account (reserve) was $46,832 and the balance in our operating account was $48,886.

 

UPCOMING AND ONGOING

 

LOVE AREA

As for my preaching I have been preaching stand alone sermons based on the Revised Common Lectionary but I am starting a new series called “Extreme Love: The Greatest Commandment” beginning Feb. 10th and running for seven weeks through Easter Sunday (March 23rd). The emphasis throughout the series is “Love God and others” which goes well with our new mission statement.

 

GROW AREA

Sunday School restarted in January to good attendance and has remained steady (40, 37, and 38). I hope we keep this momentum through May especially as we move to two services and change the time of Sunday School. I still think we need someone to be out point person/champion concerning Sunday School and Small Groups.

 

Sunday Night Bible Study restarted in January as well. We are averaging 20 in our Gospel of Matthew study.  

 

Our Women’s Group continues meet. They have stated a new study and had ten in attendance a last week. The study is led by Michele Green and meets on Tuesday nights at 7pm.

 

Our women also continue to hold their Women’s Coffee and Prayer meeting the first Saturday morning of every month at 8:30am at the church.

 

Our Men’s Group is continuing to meet as well. They’ve also been averaging 8-10. The group is led by John Krauss and meets on Thursday nights at 7pm.

 

Our Men’s ministry monthly breakfast for January was called off due to Bob Allen’s Memorial Service being at the church. The group usually meets on the third Saturday of every month in the KidZone room.

 

Small Groups/Home Groups had 12 people sign-up as being interested in the October ministry campaign. We’ll see what happens with the Extreme Love campaign.

 

SHARE

Outreach Ministry Group - B.J. Fisher will be leading this ministry again in 2008. B.J. has published an ambitious calendar/schedule of events for 2008. Plans now call for a Gulf Coast/Katrina Relief trip, led by Chuck and Dawn Kirkland, the week of May 11th. I am planning on taking a team to Ghana. We had five at our first meeting on Jan. 20th. The Ghana trip is tentatively scheduled for the first two weeks of July. Several other events are planned.

 

CHILDREN AND YOUTH

Our youth will continue meeting on Sunday nights at 6pm. The Woelk’s now have three weeks under their belt and things are going well from all reports. They’ve had a lock-in, gone places, had a guest worship leader, held a parent meeting, and more. They have a Discipleship Now weekend coming up in April which is a great event.

 

Our children’s programs for now include Sunday School on Sunday mornings at 9am taught by Greg Citta and Pat Plant, Junior Worship during our worship services led by Edith Banta, Shuri Orr, a children’s teaching and activity time on Sunday evenings from 6-7pm led by Christina Krauss and Rebecca Brown, and occasional “outings” for the group led by Rhonda Sloyer. We still don’t have an overall leader for the children’s area.

 

 

Old Business:

 

  1. Financial support for missionary Amy Jackson Vicki Eitel got with Mandy and made sure Amy got her support for the months of Oct – Dec 2007. A check has been sent to YWAM for Amy.
  2. Second Service Discussion: Vicki Eitel reviewed the meeting held on 2/17/08 with some of our ministry leaders the second service would impact. The following decisions were made after further discussion:
    1. Kick off second service/new schedule on Easter weekend.
    2. Eight week pilot program (03/23/08 through 05/18/08)
      • 9:00-10:00 Worship, Children’s SS, Adult SS
      • 10:00-10:30 Fellowship
      • 10:30-11:30 Worship, Junior Worship, Adult SS, Youth SS
  3. Church Directory – Catherine Bennett to lead, photos to be made on Sundays at church in February. Format of new directory will be very similar to the last directory we did.
  4. Elder Mentors – A discussion was held about each Elder taking a few leaders under his/her wing to mentor and encourage. The list of current leaders was divided up. Linda Blanchard will compile and contact each Elder to flesh out his/her group.
  5. Replacement of Elder (Brent Orr) – The Elders have prayerfully considered this for a month now. None of the Elders feel we need to call for an election at this time. Article 4, Section 5 of our bylaws seems to indicate this review should be done each year in September. Therefore the decision was made to wait until Sept. 2008 for the vacant Elder position to be filled.
  6. Election of Corporate Officers – Secretary and Treasurer
    1. Jerry Cauley nominated, accepted and voted as Secretary
    2. Ed Densmore nominated, accepted and voted as Treasurer
  7. Discussion of forming a Finance Committee to project future goals and needs of the church. Possible member names mentioned for such a committee included: Tom Frederick, David Eitel, Ed Adams, Doug Davis, Chuck Kirkland, Brent Orr, and Jim Garrett.
  8. Discussion and consensus that a quarterly review of the budget should be conducted by the Treasurer

 

New Business:

 

  1. Holy Week Services: Discussion of three services: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Decision was made to omit the Maundy Thursday service.
  2. Yellow Pages Ad – The Yellow Pages sales representative has contacted us about the June renewal of our Yellow Pages ad. We currently pay $170 a month. Their renewal rate for the same ad is $189.50. The Elders decided the $2,274 could be better spent. We voted to cancel this advertisement.
  3. Extreme Love Series – Brief discussion held about this series and the coordination of the small group portion of the campaign. Vicki Eitel will contact the small group leaders.
  4. Church Website – We believe we should look into updating our website. The Yellow Pages advertising dollars could be used to pay for an updated website.

 

Closing Prayer – Pastor Steve closed the meeting with prayer, with special prayers for Pete Pierce and other NewSong members who are hurting, and the meeting was adjourned at 6:00pm.

 

Elder of the Month for March – Vicki Eitel

 

Next Meeting Date – Sunday, March 9th 4pm at the church.