NewSong Board of
Elders
Minutes of November
4, 2007 Meeting
The NewSong Board of Elders met in an extended session on Sunday
afternoon, November 4, 2007 from 3:00 to 5:30pm at the Church. The Elders
present included Linda Blanchard, Brian Brown,
The meeting began with a time of prayer as we waited on some of the Board
members to arrive. By the time we finished praying the other Board members had
arrived. Pastor Steve then opened the meeting by saying that the purpose of this
Board meeting was two-fold:
- First, to discuss the “big rocks”
that we felt (after praying about it for two weeks) needed to be addressed by the
Board in the upcoming year.
- Second, to discuss how we planned to implement the new mission of Love,
Grow and Share in the coming year.
The pastor’s report for the month, given below, was not discussed
to allow plenty of time to cover the two subjects above.
Discussion Point #1 - The Big
Rocks
The Big Rocks are the major things we feel we need to be addressed in the
year ahead by the Elders at NewSong. If we don’t these issues will tend to get
pushed to a back burner or forgotten until they become crises. We want to be
proactive. These Big Rocks are all directly related to our new mission to “Love, Grow and Share.” We prayed about them
individually before we came together as a group. We came out of the meeting
with four Big Rocks we see as needing special attention in 2008:
1. FACILITIES – We asked ourselves, “Do we feel we can “love, grow and share” as God is calling us to do in
our current facility?” We agreed as a Board that we are definitely cramped
in our worship space. We felt the classroom space we have is “passable” since
our future emphasis is going to be on small groups (meeting in homes) more than
on having a multitude of classes meeting at the church. We further agreed that
as God’s mission is fleshed out at NewSong that growth not only in spirit but
also in numbers is inevitable. That means some kind of move (whether to new
rented space, or whether we buy and build) is very likely
on the horizon for us. In order to deal with the worship space issue we
discussed going to multiple services. We don’t want to move too quickly on
that, however, because we want to build on the current momentum and growth we are
experiencing now in worship. Splitting our worship attenders into two smaller
groups—or more likely one tiny group and one 15-20% smaller than it is now
could actually backfire and hurt us. Thus we agreed to continue to pray about
the second service idea for the time being. We did agree that when we do go to
two services—which we all felt was good stewardship or our space—we should
contact our existing member families to see who would be willing to attend a
9:00am service instead of a 10:30 service. If we could “colonize” that service
with a good group, that would free up additional seating for the 10:30 service
for newcomers to NewSong. We also discussed having church only at 9am, with
Sunday School and church offered at 10:30. That way
someone could come to the early service and still attend Sunday School. It would also allow us to invite folks from the 9am
service to stay for Sunday School afterwards making
for a good hand-off.
The bottom line on facilities is we feel we are crowded, especially in
worship, and we may be losing some newcomers because when they come to NewSong
they feel crowded. Thus, at a minimum, we will be exploring two services in
2008, and will be keeping our eyes and ears to the ground about the potential
of moving to other facilities. What we don’t want to do is to hold “the new
space” (whatever and wherever that may be) as the “end-all-be-all-cure-all” for
NewSong.
2. STAFFING – We asked ourselves, “Do we feel we can “love, grow and share” as God is calling us to do
with our current staff?” Current paid staff at NewSong consists of a
pastor, an administrative assistant, and youth minister (outsourced). Possible
additional staff discussed were an Associate Pastor to
help mainly with assimilation and congregational care; a worship leader to
concentrate on leading the church to deeper levels of intimacy with God through
heartfelt worship; a children’s minister, who could plan, coordinate and direct
our children’s ministry, and the possibility of bringing our youth staff back
in-house. The gist of our discussion was that we ranked our needs in the
following order: Associate Pastor, Worship Leader, Children’s Leader, and Youth
Leader. We felt that an Associate Pastor could help especially with the “hand-offs”
in our mission schema (worship, to small groups, to serving in and out of the church).
It would be great to have someone other than our pastor to take the hand of
newcomers to NewSong and help them find their place among us. We also discussed
a Worship Leader a good bit. We believe the praise band is getting better each
week at leading us to the throne of God, especially with
The bottom line on staffing is we are going to continue to pray about
this and pray for God to raise additional staff from within, or bring them to
us from outside our current congregation. We will keep this crucial issue in
mind as we move into 2008.
3. ASSIMILATION – We asked ourselves, “Do we feel we can “love, grow and share as God is calling us
to do with our current patterns of assimilation?” We consider this to be a
glaring weakness right now at NewSong. How does someone move from visiting
NewSong once to finding their place among us, feeling at home, growing to be
like Jesus, and sharing God’s love through ministry in and through the church?
The big issue here is what we call “hand-offs.” How does one move from loving
God (worship) to growing to be like Jesus (spiritual formation/small groups) to
sharing with the world (ministry and mission outreach)? The only real program we have in place now is
a visitor-member team that contacts all our visitors on a systematic basis as they
work their way through visits one, two, three and beyond. But once someone
decides to call NewSong their church home they really have to take the
initiative and find their own way through the maze of ministries we presently
have to know what to do next, or what group to get involved with, or how to move
deeper into the life of the church.
The bottom line on assimilation is we definitely see this as an area to
shore up or reinvent in 2008. We don’t know whether it will involve additional
staffing, or ministry realignment (see below). Whatever, we need to make a
smooth path with abundantly clear and helpful handoffs from love to grow to
share.
4. MINISTRY ALIGNMENT – We asked ourselves, “Do we feel we can “love, grow and share” as
God is calling us to do with our current ministry groups and structure at
NewSong?” We are especially concerned in this area about having “ministry blind
spots” where we think we’ve got the bases covered (say by having plenty of
worship opportunities, or great worship leadership, or lots of classes at
convenient times, or outreach opportunities that appeal to everyone) and then
discovering we do not. We also don’t want to have so much going on that we
simply overwhelm our members with “busyness” by making them feel like every
member has to be involved in every program of the church (and, by the same
token, we don’t want our leaders to feel offended if everyone doesn’t
participate in their particular ministry—we need to offer a variety of ways for
folks to connect and feel comfortable doing so. We also want to make certain we
are doing all that God has in mind for us to be doing and not get into ruts of
doing what we think we should be doing as a church (traditionally or otherwise)
and then asking God to bless it.
The bottom line on ministry alignment is we feel like we need to do a
ministry audit early on in 2008 where we align everything under the categories
of love, grow and share and then search our hearts to see if some ministries
need to be given a proper funeral, and others birthed.
Discussion Point #2 - How to
Implement Love, Grow, and Share
On the “how to implement the mission” question, we really didn’t have as
much time as we’d have liked to talk about this. We did come to consensus that
we feel like we need to progress through the three initiatives in order from
love to grow to share as they do build upon each other. Someone really can’t
grow to be like Jesus or share God’s love until they’ve experienced God’s love
themselves. We also decided we need to take as much time as necessary on each
of the three. It would be great to do love around Christmas, have a small group
campaign in January, and have a mission outreach push as the school year winds
down so people can deploy on mission trips. We refuse to let the calendar
dictate how much time we will allow for each phase. It may be that it takes a
year for each one.
Pastor Steve will kick off the “love” phase with a sermon series during
Advent called “Love Came Down at
Christmas” where the theme will be love. After we’ve dwelt on that for as
long as we feel like it takes (and probably then some) we’ll move on.
We also feel like as we deal with the “big rocks” above, especially the
assimilation and ministry alignment pieces, some of what we will hopefully
discover there will clarify the pace and urgency at which we should proceed
with the grow and share pieces.
Other Business:
The final thing the Elders did, after closing in an extended prayer time,
was to go upstairs to the worship center and rearrange the chairs. We realized
that one of our “crowding” issues is that people tend to come in and sit on the
end of the rows, then others come in and are reluctant
to climb over other worshippers to get to the middle of the seating sections.
This means we have big holes on either side of our seating areas. To help with
this we created two additional rows to walk down, effectively splitting the two
sections we formerly had into four. We were able to do this without removing
hardly any of the existing chairs. We have 180 seats now available, all of
which are more accessible than the former arrangement. We will continue to
experiment with this to see how we can tweak the seating further.
The following are highlights from Pastor Steve’s Report for the month. As mentioned above these items were not specifically discussed at
the meeting to allow for more time on the two main agenda items.
Pastor’s Report – November
4, 2007
October has come and gone and
with it another great
ministry year sign-up at NewSong. We’re off to a fantastic start in this new
church year with a new mission statement, and renewed passion about what God is
doing among us. Through the course of the campaign we had ministry booklets
turned in for 98 full (adult) members who signed up for over 744 ministry team
positions, Sunday School classes, men’s and women’s groups, Bible studies,
teaching positions, and other roles and offices in the church. The final tally
on our member estimates of giving for 2008 is also encouraging as we have
received estimates of giving totaling $276,260.
Since our 2008 budget was approved at $275,000 that means if everyone gives
what they expect to give in 2008 we should have funds available for ministry
expansion as well as be able to set aside funds for our future relocation to a
more permanent facility. It’s a great time to be at NewSong to LOVE,
GROW, and SHARE with the world!
In addition to the successful
ministry campaign, October was a good month in other ways. Attendance and
participation remained strong in our various groups with the exception of
Sunday School where we experienced a dip. Our new
FEAST groups are meeting and lots of people are making new and better
connections with their church family. We had a speaker from the Christian
Motorcyclist Association at the men’s group breakfast on the 20th.
And on the 28th of the month the church gathered for a picnic after
church at the Sawnee Mountain Preserve to honor our pastor and his family.
Our Average YTD worship attendance dropped off by one
person to 137. Attendance for the four Sundays was 143, 130, 120, and 135 (monthly
average 132).
Current membership statistics
as of the end of October have been changed to reflect those who did and did not
renew their membership covenant as of now we have 56 member families, 98
full members, 45 preparatory members
and 77 constituent members for a
total of 220. On Oct. 30 I mailed a letter to 17 full
members of NewSong who had not filled out and turned in a membership covenant
for the coming year as of that date. Of the 17, seven responded positively that
they did wish to continue as members. 10 did not respond and so they have been removed
as full members but hopefully they will continue to be at least an occasional
part of our family. The ten are John Blanchard, Patti Brown, Robert Curtin,
Brack and Wendy Hudson, Brian Long,
I also mailed a letter on Oct. 30 to all 19 of our current prospect families inviting them to a membership orientation class to be held on Tues. Nov. 13th. So far I have heard from two of those families that they intend to attend—the Taylors and the Imhoffs. I hope to have others to come and learn more about our church.
Financially speaking, revenues for the month were $27,794 and expenses were $18,326 with income exceeding expenses
by $9,465 for the month. Our YTD
numbers through the end of October are revenues of $222,560 and expenses of $196,181
with revenues exceeding expenses by $26,380.
The balance in our Fidelity reserve account as of the end of October was $40,749. We continue
to deposit $430.76 a week in the Fidelity account to cover the children’s
director and worship leader salaries.
UPCOMING AND ONGOING
I will be offering a Membership Orientation Class on Tuesday evening, Nov. 13th. I’ve invited all our current prospects and will explain the NewSong mission, talk about our beliefs, traditions, history and theology as a church, as well as answer any questions newcomers to our church may have. The group will then be invited to join the church.
LOVE AREA
As for my preaching I will be preaching stand alone messages continue
preaching from the Revised Common Lectionary on Nov. 4, 11, and 25.
We are also going to hold a Service of Healing and Prayer on
Thursday night, Nov. 8th. I’m hopeful we can build on openness folks
had recently about persistent, apparently unmet prayer needs. We will pray for
healing and try to renew the hearts and encourage folks through the tough times
many in our church family are going through. If this service seems to help we
may offer monthly or quarterly services like this.
GROW AREA
Sunday School is going well with two adult
classes, a youth class and a children’s class. Attendance has dropped off somewhat
from our first few weeks. I’m hoping to keep attendance up, especially until we
get additional groups up and running (small groups, home groups).
Sunday Night Bible Study, is going great. We’re through the first 8 chapters
of Hebrews. We’ll continue that study through Dec. 16th. We usually
have 20 to 25 present each week. The children’s time during SNBS led by
Our Women’s Group is starting a new Beth Moore study called Living Free. The study begins by
defining false strongholds, then focuses on five key
benefits for every believer, including how to find satisfaction in God and
experience God's peace. As the subtitle suggests, participants can learn how to
develop a Godward focus in life, while beginning to incorporate the key
benefits in their lives through practices of prayer and Bible study. The study
is led by
Our women also hold a Women’s
Coffee and Prayer meeting the first Saturday morning of every month at 8:30am
at the church.
Our Men’s Group is wrapping up their current study “Faith Under Fire” and is about to begin volume 2 of this study called Faith and Facts. These studies are apologetics studies where the men learn to defend their faith and to clarify beliefs. The group is led by John Krauss and meet on Thursday nights at 7pm. They average about 6-8 men a week.
Our Men’s ministry also has a monthly breakfast the third Saturday of every month held in the KidZone room. This month’s meeting will be on Saturday, November 17th 8:00AM.
Small Groups/Home Groups had a good sign-up in the ministry campaign. We (the Elders) are hoping to do some kind of training/launch/campaign in the first quarter of 2008 for small groups which we definitely see as a large component of the “Grow” piece of our mission.
SHARE AREA
Outreach Ministry Group - B.J. Fisher has called a meeting for Sunday afternoon, Nov. 11th for all persons who signed up for outreach in our ministry campaign. The group will be discussing local, regional and international outreach opportunities for the coming year as well as being a forum for folks to bring their ideas to share with the group.
Operation Christmas Child – Kicked off November 4th. This year the
OCC mission team has decided to ask our church families to bring in their own
boxes already filled with the gifts along with personal notes and the shipping fee.
We will be collecting shoeboxes until November 25 and our 2007 goal is 100
boxes! The OCC mission team will be going to the OCC warehouse in
CHILDREN AND YOUTH
Our youth continue meeting on Sunday nights at 6pm. They went on a retreat the first weekend of November. Attendance at youth has remained steady at about 15-20 a week, heavy on the middle-schooler side. The youth also go on a monthly outreach to disadvantaged youth called “Kid-Zone Outreach” on the first Saturday morning of each month. They also have a “Super Sunday” once a month where they spend the whole day together after church going on outings, watching movies, playing games, etc…
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
Meeting Close
Closing Prayer
Move upstairs to rearrange the chairs
Next Meeting: The next meeting of the Board of Elders will be held on Sunday, December 9th at 4pm.
Elder of the Month for December – Brian Brown (tentatively)