February Church Council Minutes

Genesee Lutheran Church Council

Monthly Meeting

February 26, 2013

Attending:

Jennifer Parkins, Courtney Scharnhorst, Doug Cartwright, Susan Riggs, Dan Carter, Patrick Adams, Linda Chilson, Pastor David Deckard

Meeting was started at 7PM

Jennifer Parkins read to us about Holy Leisure-

Holy Leisure , as do prayer and work, serves God. It may sometimes be self-refreshment or refreshment by another. But it must result in a return to work and prayer with renewal and joy.

Benedict’s genius was t recognize that leisure is also God’s and should be so absorbing as to be timeless. Still those monastery bells peal regularly, reminding us who we are, and calling the community to prayer, work and play. Order in all of life, they toll, right priorities, ad balance, are essential.

I often forget that God wants me to laugh, to enjoy, being myself, to rest. “Peace comes from living a measured life,” says Sister Joan. “Peace comes from attending to every part of my world in a sacramental way.” Peace comes from holy leisure!

Next month Susan will bring something on “Devotion”

Financial report was given by Susan Riggs-

Things are the same as reported at the annual meeting. We did get a Memorial Donation from the family of Bud Deister. The Portico account is now being combined for both St Johns and the Valley Church as one. So far things look good for the Donations Button on the Blog site; Susan plans on checking that once a month for now.

Sunday School Report-

The Sunday School classes are now preparing for Passion Sunday program.

Erika Grieser is interested in taking over Phyllis’s position as Worship Committee Chair-Phyllis will be helping her with the transition. This leaves open Erika’s position as the Preschool Sunday School teacher, Vikki Fountain has agreed to take Erika’s place this coming fall.

Pastor’s Report-

The Movies have been a big hit with all those working on them and viewing enjoying them very much. The teens will be working on one more for this year. There will be an evening set up soon where all the movies will be able to be seen, date to be announced. If you have not seen any you really need to plan on trying to make it that evening.

Youth weekend went very well attendance was high with 17-18 teens attending over the weekend. Saturday night had the largest attendance-Patrick Adams came and helped bake Pizza that evening. Food was not a problem as several members contributed with food for the weekend. Another teen activity is going to be done over Spring Break.

Lent Services are going to be Simple and Clean this year, what we will be doing for Holy Week and Easter has not been determined yet.

Pastor Dave has had good feedback on the Vision we have for our Church. He plans on making up a shorter version of what he is foreseeing and the floor plans to mail out so that everyone can see.

Stewardship is our next goal; we have come full circle from what the church was to what it is today, now we need to start working towards the future. Stewardship is important for the mission of our church and we hope to approach this in a new way. We need to clarify who and what membership is. One of the goals for the counsel is to make up a new directory of our members.

New Business-

We need to set up an “Activities Committee” Meeting in early March, possibly a Wednesday evening after Lent Services, Jennifer will get a date set up and let everyone know.

Jennifer welcomed the new council members. We need to look at the offices soon since officers may only serve two terms per offices.

Patrick reported that the ELCA site has many ideas for helping with our vision for this year. He gave us five pages as a sample of things we could do. One way was to look at it as a contrast of how we may look at church and what our goal would be:

Consumer Church                                 Is Different from         Missional Church

Church is seen as a dispenser of                                              A body of people sent on mission who

religious goods and services. People                                       gather in community for worship,

come to church to be “fed”, to have                                         community encouragement and

their needs met through quality                                                 teaching from the Word in addition to   

programs, and to have the professionals                                 what they are self-feeding

reach their children about God.                                                  themselves throughout the week.

I go to church                                                                                    I am the church

The idea of giving out of gratitude not out of debtedness is one way to look at this.  We also need to find how to get everyone to feel a part of everything. First thing though that we need to do is come up with our Mission before we start on Stewardship. It was asked that we come to the next meeting with our goals, ideas of issues and challenges we feel people will face. This could probably be done in a sub-committee with them coming back to us with what they have come up with. Pastor Dave felt we could start the discussion at the next Theology on Tap.

Susan gave us information on the Synod Assembly that was coming up April 19-21 in Boise. Early registration would need to be in by March 10^th. The theme for this year is “Spirit Powers Us”. It was felt that we would like to know what work classes they were going to be having before deciding on whether we wanted to send anyone.

We also need to find someone to be Vice President.

Our next meeting will be March 12, 2013 at 7PM at St John’s.  Meeting was adjourned at 8PM.