Executive Meeting - Planning for the April 7th Retreat

God told Moses, "Get 70 community elders, ones whom you know are real leaders among the people, and bring them into the congregation tent where we meet. Tell them to stand with you there. 17 I will then descend among you. I will speak with you, and withdraw some of My Spirit from you and place it on them so that they can help you with the burden of this people. Then you won’t have to carry it all alone."   - Numbers 11.16-17 The Voice

Moses was feeling overwhelmed at the task of caring for the people of Israel and so God told him to select a group of trusted elders from the various tribes of Israel who will then be responsible for watching over the people.  Time and time again, I have asked members to assist in caring for the direction of any particular church that I have served.  Those chosen have generally been selected by the their leadership role in the church (lay leaders, church council chairs, staff parish as well as some staff.)  The "Executive Team" is an informal group (not approved by the Church Council) and they are most often the first line of "crazy ideas" and sounding board for me, and they to me, before we take ideas before the Church Council.  I believe that many pastors have these informal groups and use them in their own context for the same purpose.  If not, they should!  

Since my arrival at Westminster, I have trusted the advice and counsel of the Chair and Vice Chair of the Church Council Chair, lay leaders, Staff Parish Relations Team and the Associate Pastor.  Some of these folks have changed in and out as they retired from positions in the church and together they have collectively and individually been good sounding boards for the direction of the church. 

Most recently the Executive Team is looking to Saturday, April 7th for our Church Council Retreat.  We hare already met three times: January 13, February 3rd and 17th.  Our next meeting in on March 17th.  

In the January 13th meeting.  At this meeting, we discussed a variety of subject:

• How I was excited about what we were doing at Westminster that I was starting to see how our model could fit very well into a project for my Doctorate of Ministry program, see my first blog entry "Seeing Visions and Dreaming new Dreams" .  Specifically, we needed to focus on how the leadership was going to assess, evaluate, plan and then implement the mission, vision and values of our congregation. 
• We discussed holding Church council Retreat on February 3rd.  See my February 8th, "Council Retreating"  which subsequently got reschedule to Saturday, April 7th. 
• We agreed that a survey of our congregation was needed in anticipation of the February 3rd Council Retreat. 
• We discussed the need to establish goals for 2018, consider looking at our vision statement and our need perhaps to revise. 
• We realized that we needed to meet again to plan the retreat more thoroughly. 

On February 3rd, the Executive team met and we discussed the plans for the rescheduled Council Retreat.  Our meeting discu ssed the follow: 

• We will encourage every member to be in a small group.  A lot of conversation revolved around what a small group was and how it is to function.  This will be fleshed out in the upcoming meetings. 
• We also considered the manner in which folks became members of Westminster UMC and then how did we incorporate them into the community of faith.  I showed a chart of our current system and then we discussed ways that we could revise this process.  (ie. more regular Westminster 101/Orientation meetings, role of lay leadership to be mentors, incorporation of new members into small groups.  Scott agreed to take our notes and create some order out of them.  He presented two powerpoints slides from our notes at the next meeting
  
  
  
  
• We discussed the result of the Worship Survey conducted on January 24th.  See Blog Post dated January 31st, 2018, "How Effective are we at Casting the Mission, Vision and Core Values of our Congregation?" 
• We planned to meet again in a couple of weeks to allow Scott to pull together our notes and we would come together with plan for the retreat. 

On February 17th, we met again and in this meeting we discussed our format for the upcoming retreat.  It was agreed that we needed to try to keep focused on how our congregation handles and copes with change.  We also agreed that Small Groups and initiation in to the community of faith was essential but not just for those who are new to the congregation, we needed to have the long term membership also understand the process of joining and how they can participate in the process as well.  We agreed that we needed another meeting and that is set for March 17th.  At this meeting we have invited those staff and members who are looking at the Small Group Ministry of the Church to help us plan for sharing this with the congregation.  

On February 24th, a Church council meeting was held and at that meeting a lot of folks shared what is going on in their ministry area.  We also took a tour of the new Boy and Girls Club on East Main Street and became very excited about this new community leader moving into our five block radius.  Sally, United Methodist Women President, asked if we will be discussing ways in which we can support this new venture to our neighborhood and inquired if we could take some time at the Church Council retreat to discuss this.  We hope to including seeing visions and dreaming new dreams as part of the upcoming retreat.  

That's about what has been going on behind the scenes.  

In the next few days, I hope to consolidate a report from our McDaniel Interns who are participating in a class title, Wealth, Power and Prestige.  They have completed some surveys of our neighborhood and I think it will be good to see how these students view our neighborhood.