Leadership Retreat Update

Leadership Model

The Council and Boards and more recent past Moderators (the Mod Squad) met on Sunday in a Leadership Retreat to review the lack of a Moderator and Vice Moderator and to review ideas to close the budget gap giving us a deficit budget.

The Mod Squad and Pastor Becky worked out a plan to fill the Leadership void for this year with a group of people called a Leadership Circle. 

The description of a new temporary leadership model starts with a description of the functions that are missing:

• First, we need someone to chair the actions of the Church Council.  Someone to preside at the Council meetings, put together an agenda.  This person would fill an at-large position on the Council and would have a vote, but would not take on the full responsibilities of the Moderator that seem to have been expanding over the years.
• Second, we need someone to chair a committee to help us find our unique direction.  At our meeting, it was generally agreed that we needed to limit our focus to one or two things to help define who we, as a congregation, are.  Right now we have limited people and funds to accomplish goals, so those goals must also be limited.  Those limited goals need to be carefully chosen to reflect how we want to serve God.
• Third, we need a liaison between the lay leadership of the church and the church staff.  This person will need to be able to attend meetings with the staff to address concerns and opportunities between staff and leadership.
• Fourth, we need someone to facilitate communication between leadership and the congregation.  Someone to investigate what group of methods give the best results when reporting things to the congregation and the most effective ways for the congregation to communicate back to the leadership of the church.

The Council agreed that we should implement this model for this year to address our leadership needs and we had volunteers to fill the positions listed above that were approved by Council.

The members of the Leadership Circle are:

Josh Dyer, Scott Waletzko, Carol Freeman and Jeff Newcomb.

Several ideas for closing the budget gap were discussed which has affects both short and long term. Among them were:

• Selling part of the parking lot
• Reviewing and changing wedding policies to get more weddings in our Sanctuary
• Potentially sharing our building with another congregation
• It was pointed out in our Annual meeting that if the average pledge went up $600, the deficit would disappear

Routine updates will be coming about Board and Council meetings. What is the best way to reach our congregation?

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