NewSong Board of Elders

Minutes of April 15, 2007 Meeting

 

The NewSong Board of Elders met on Sunday afternoon, April 15, 2007 from 4:30 to 6:00pm at the Church. Elders present included: Brian Brown, Jerry Cauley, Vicki Eitel, Steve Jackson, and Brent Orr and Curt Sloyer Ed Densmore was not present as he is at the FBI Academy in Virginia for ten weeks.

 

After opening with prayer Pastor Steve began the meeting by going over his report. The following is a recap of that report:

 

March at NewSong was a good month as we observed Lent and prepared for Easter. Activities during the month included a men’s breakfast as well as a women’s organizational fellowship breakfast. We also held a church-wide movie night on the 23rd. Our men’s small group started a new study on March 22nd. Our Sunday meal and Bible Study wrapped things up on the 25th. We also continued our Lenten preaching series titled, “The Path of Discipleship.”

 

Other Items

Average YTD worship attendance at the end of March has dropped by one person to 141. Attendance was “up and down” during the month with the four Sundays being 128, 147, 130 and 153 in attendance. We continue to have several visitors who are attending and our visitor-member team is doing a great job following up with these folks. We also purchased some NewSong coffee mugs during March to hand-deliver to our first-timers (John Krauss does that for us).

 

Current membership statistics as of the end of March reflect the gain of three families: Joe and Dayna DeLoach, Brian Long and Patricia Brown, and Lourdes Webber joined on March 25th. As of the end of March we had 59 member families, 102 full members, 78 preparatory members and 37 constituent members for a total of 217.   

 

Financially speaking, March was an excellent month. Revenues for the month were $27,248  and expenses were $20,172 with revenues exceeding expenses by $7,077 for the month. Our YTD numbers are revenues of $65,155 and expenses of $57,914 with revenues exceeding expenses by $7,242. As for tithing our offerings, we continue to keep this at 10% of our offerings, with $6,534 given on YTD revenues of $65,155. The balance in our Fidelity reserve account at the end of March stands at $36,641.

 

Coming Up:

 

My preaching series for the next six weeks is entitled “Empty Tomb Postscript” and I intend to emphasize that in the church Easter isn’t just a day it’s a season that runs from Easter Sunday to Pentecost (50 days). I’ll be mostly preaching from the Gospel of John.

 

Sunday School will run through June 10th then break for the summer (not sure if all classes will continue or not). My class is doing another John Ortberg book titled “Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them” and David and Vicki Eitel’s class is starting a study on the Trinity.

 

The men are holding a retreat the weekend of May 5-6 at a camp in North Georgia.

 

The women are starting a new study on Tuesday nights beginning April 17 called “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.”

 

Our Children will attend summer camp at Camp Woodlands in Temple, GA on June 10-13 for rising 3rd and 4th graders and on June 3-8 for rising 5th and 6th graders. We will also hold VBS from July 23-26 here at NewSong with a western theme this year called “Avalanche Ranch.” Our volunteer children’s leaders held a meeting on March 25th and made some great plans and got very organized. They plan to begin meeting quarterly with their next meeting planned for June 24th right after church.

 

The youth will continue meeting on Sunday nights and will be going on a “Big Stuff” retreat in Panama City Beach, Florida from June 17 to 21st.

 

The Fellowship Ministry has a “Barbeque and Bluegrass” event planned for Sunday afternoon, April 29th from 3-5pm at Young Deer Park on Lake Lanier. Scotty DePriest’s bluegrass band will be entertaining us. The El Salvador mission team will be selling barbeque to take home after the BBQ for a fund-raiser.

 

Following the pastor’s report the following old business items were discussed:

 

Fidelity Account – All the paperwork we did to have all the Elders as signers on our Fidelity Account  had to be redone once again because they said we used the wrong forms (forms which they sent us!). We signed the forms again and hopefully this will take care of things.

 

Church Directory – Steve has turned the church directory over to Rebecca Brown to finish up getting it back to Olan Mills. Hopefully this will be done soon.

 

Missions Update: The Ghana Mission has been cancelled for the time being due to a lack of communication between Pastor Yaw and NewSong. The El Salvador team will be going on June 17-24 (Sunday to Sunday) with 7 people going: Brian and Michael Brown, Amy and Leigh Jackson, Tiffany Fisher, Adam Crawford, and Nathan Green. Brian advises that Enlace would like us to raise $40,000 for the water project in Las Delicias. The Gulf Coast trip is still up in the air.

 

Following the old business report the following New Business items were discussed:

 

State of the Church: Steve asked the Elders to give him feedback about how they feel things are going at the church or if they had any questions of him. Jerry Cauley asked if Steve thought the Elders were doing what they should be doing—and doing enough. Steve assured Jerry that he felt the Elders are, but that the door is always open for them to do more ministry such as visitation, speaking, teaching, and counseling. Curt Sloyer said he would like to see us begin doing more advertising now that we are on better ground financially. He noted that while the church is not a business in the usual sense, they always notice a dramatic increase in business at the car dealership he works at when they advertise. Vicki Eitel stated she felt as though we needed to be more intentional in evangelism and outreach to our local community. Vicki said she believes the model of ministry in El Salvador, where local churches assess the community’s needs and then work to fill that need, should work in our community as well. Brian Brown agreed, but pointed out that in our area most of the needs found in El Salvador (infrastructure such as roads, water, etc…) are already met. Brian added that he felt prayer is another area where perhaps we need to bolster our efforts and perhaps prayer is the avenue we can take to discern more about how God would have us serve our local community. The group concluded this discussion by agreeing we need to make this an issue of prayer—that we would be receptive and discerning of any moves of God that we can or should participate in.

 

Prayer: After this discussion the Elders held a lengthy time of prayer for all the needs of the church, for the sick, for the ministries of the church, for our pastor, for more leaders to arise among us, and for each other (the Elders).

 

Elder of the Month – Our upcoming Elder of the Month for May is Brent Orr.

 

Next Meeting Date – our next meeting date is set for Sunday, May 20th at 4pm at the church (meeting changed from our normal date due to Mother’s Day).

 

The meeting was adjourned at 6:00pm