Board Meeting Minutes: December 4, 2021

Attendees: Jo Ella Coles, Greg Fisher, Adam Goforth, Matt Hoostal, Rosalie Karunas, Alex McCauslin, JoAnn McCullogh (via Zoom), Melanie Odom-Groh

Meeting start: 9:35am

Devotional (Melanie Odom-Groh)
JoAnn McCullogh on West Willow
1. JoAnn gave an overview of the work that the New West Willow Neighborhood Association is currently doing.
2. The NWWNA is currently focused on seniors in the neighborhood, working on improving communication as well as improving health through health screenings. Working with Journey of Faith, they are providing snow removal for some people.
3. Additionally, the NWWNA has a tool lending library, little free libraries, a youth poetry group, and a 1,000 sq ft garden.
4. Question: what is a goal that you and/or the NWWNA board have for the next year or two?
5. JoAnn: Our goal is to get good communication going with the community. One huge problem is that we can't find out what people need or what they can offer, so our main goal is to solve that communication problem.
6. Jo Ella Coles: student nurses will be rolling out diabetes awareness and physical activity programs in January. A grant proposal to fund intergenerational activities between seniors and youth has been submitted, with the goal of using the community gardens to foster those relationships. We're working with Packard Health to possibly bring a health clinic to the neighborhood.
Additional updates on the Elderly and Caregiving Ministry (Jo Ella Coles)
1. We're scheduled to pilot a health and wellness project in the Sugarbrook neighborhood with Grace Fellowship Church.
Adam Goforth on his role as Historian
1. Adam described his background and his understanding of the role of historian:
  1. Keeping and filing minutes, communicating decisions to the congregation
  2. Tracking ongoing board work
  3. Heading up church communication in general
    1. Proposing and overseeing strategy
    2. Coordination with Susana and others
    3. Includes all online resources and properties
Finance Update (Matt Hoostal)
1. State of financial signers
  1. There was an attempt to add Matt Hostal and Melanie Odom-Groh as financial signers on the church's PNC bank accounts, but it wasn't possible. When the church changed its name from Memorial Christian Church to Journey of Faith, it was only done in some places, but not all. Neither the bank nor the payroll company have our accounts under the new name, so the bank wouldn't recognize our board meeting minutes documenting the decision to add new signers to the bank accounts.
  2. We have a Russia with Love bank account, it probably hasn't been used in years and we don't know who is currently responsible for it.
  3. Action Item: Alex (primary), Susana, and Matt will work on changing the name of the church with PNC and the payroll company.
2. 2022 budget
  1. This work has not yet started. There is a desire to have the accounting catchup work and the chart of accounts done with Jitasa before creating the budget.
3. Jitasa
  1. Onboarding has been completed. This involved conversations with Jitasa about how we can organize our financial processes and integrate with their systems.
  2. We have an agreed-upon understanding of what accounts exist and how all our expenses need to be tracked. Also, all processes are defined.
  3. The catchup work is ongoing.
  4. The integration between the Jitasa and Journey of Faith systems is not finished, but it's understood how it needs to work.
Giving Letter and Budget Development (Rosalie Karunas)
1. Rosalie asked the board for ideas for our budget focus for next year. The goal is to gather suggestions, and once we have numbers from the accountants, we can figure out which areas can be funded. A number of ideas were suggested:
  1. Supporting people at the church in their ministry work.
  2. Improving the experience for online streaming worship participants.
  3. Improving integration between the worshipping community and the ministry community.
  4. JoF provides a hub for a network of groups (e.g. Peace House, Rose, homeless ministries) and we could find ways to make that even more effective.
  5. Creating an institutional framework for seeding projects by finding passionate people and asking them to take on projects aligned with their passion. Instead of finding individual donors who can support a specific project, we could fund projects out of our budget.
  6. Continuing to pay a thriving wage instead of just a living wage to our employees.
  7. Rather than expanding the number of things we are doing, we could invest more in or enhance the things we're already doing. For example, adding more soap and suds equipment, doing more against COVID in the homelessness ministry, or similar.
  8. Improving our children's program.
    1. Alex: I don't think we'll have a significant children's ministry any time soon, but I want to see us include our children more in the intergenerational activities and life of the church.
Building Update (Greg Fisher)
1. Maintenance Hire: Michael Ulmer
  1. Michael has met with Alex and Tom several times. Everyone on the building team, in particular Tom, has only positive things to say about him and would feel good about hiring him.
  2. Michael's rate will be higher than Tom's. We have about $615 budgeted each month for Tom, but he donates most of that back to the church. Michael is currently getting $700 per month from St. Luke's and would expect the same from Journey of Faith.
  3. Alex McCauslin: In talking to other churches about maintenance people, they pay $100-150 per week for cleaning, but many don't hire an explicit maintenance employee.
  4. Adam Goforth: what duties would he perform for the church?
    1. Following a schedule of regular repeating maintenance tasks (changing filters, etc).
    2. Taking on the fixing of a number of existing known issues.
    3. Being on call if an emergency comes up.
    4. Weekly cleaning of the church building, so we would not hire a separate cleaning service.
  5. Melanie Odom-Groh proposed engaging Michael Ulmer as maintenance person and cleaner at the rate of $700 per month. By general consent the board adopted this proposal, with no opposition voiced.
2. Update: church building purchase proposal
  1. Mosaic Church has communicated some general ideas for how they might share use of the Journey of Faith church building, but nothing specific. They've said they want to send a concrete proposal, but they have not yet. Anything that is received will be shared with the board for discussion.
Pastor’s Report (Alex McCauslin)
1. It's been a difficult month for staff, with many personal crises coming up for staff members.
2. No advent worship team was formed for this year, something that would usually happen.
3. Housing Allowance Vote
  1. Alex gets a tax-advantaged housing allowance as part of her compensation. The board has to approve this housing allowance each year.
  2. Alex has received $13,500 each year in recent years, and requests the same amount for next year.
  3. Melanie Odom-Groh asked for consensus to approve a $13,500 housing allowance for Alex in 2022. By general consent the board adopted this proposal, with no opposition voiced.
4. Jo Ella Coles brought up Alex's sabbatical. She has the opportunity after 5 years to take a sabbatical, but she is currently in her 8th year at the church and has not taken one. There could be an opportunity to fund a sabbatical through a Lilly Endowment grant, but that process takes 18 months.
Congregational Meeting date and time to be set at Jan 8 meeting
1. Goal: have the congregational meeting at the end of Jan or beginning of Feb, depending on the timeline for receiving financial information from Jitasa.
Other Items
1. Jo Ella Coles: We should talk about DEI efforts for the board. Our United Way funding requires DEI efforts at the church.
2. Jo Ella Coles: In January Jo Ella will start attending a program to learn about setting up a separate non-profit for the church, to serve as a hub for other initiatives (the Art Gallery, etc). The board had previously approved this.
  1. Action Item: Jo Ella will report back in January about the program and this work.
3. Replacement for Minneth
  1. There has been no progress so far in finding a replacement board member for Minneth, who recently left the board.
4. Worship team
  1. Dave intends to be back every week starting now, but that depends on his health recovery.
5. Nursing student interns in our building
  1. The facility agreement was signed, but students have not yet been in the building. We had hoped to get them in the building for the daytime warming center, but that hasn't happened yet.
Debrief and Close (Alex McCauslin)

Meeting end: 11:59