Board Meeting Minutes: January 8, 2022

Attendees: Jo Ella Coles, Adam Goforth, Rosalie Karunas, Alex McCauslin, Melanie Odom-Groh

Meeting Start: 9:41am

Devotional
Presentation by Bethany Burge
1. Bethany is an occupational therapist who specializes in helping older people age well, with a focus on home modification.
2. She is working on healthy aging in the West Willow neighborhood as part of the Healthy Together West Willow project. This work includes partnerships with the New West Willow Neighborhood Association, University of Michigan, Journey of Faith, and others.
Jo Ella on her role as MInistry Team Liaison
1. Jo Ella shared some of her personal history and the work she's done connected to the church.
A Servant’s Heart (Jo Ella Coles)
1. A Servant’s Heart is a project whose purpose is to be a hub for churches and other organizations to work together on helping underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods in Washtenaw County.
2. It was started by Journey of Faith with a plan of eventually splitting it out as a separate entity.
3. The West Willow neighborhood has been a major focus of the project so far.
4. This year we want to establish A Servant's Heart as a non-profit organization.
Beginning DEI Work (Jo Ella Coles)
1. Two of the grants we have been awarded include a DEI component. We will start working on this by fostering learning and conversations within the church board itself.
2. The stories we tell are important to who we are as a community. This church has not always told true stories around race and we need to do better.
3. Jo Ella brought a number of books about race to be available for board members or others in the church community to read.
4. Copies of the book "The Conversation" were given to each board member.
5. Action item: all board members should read Part 1 of The Conversation by the next board meeting.
Finance Update (Alex McCauslin)
1. We are still in conversation with Jitasa. They want to have the catch-up work done by the end of January. They need some additional info from us before this work can be finished.
2. The 2022 budget can be made once that catch-up work is finished. We hope to create the budget at the beginning of February and have a congregational meeting shortly thereafter to approve it.
3. Tentative schedule (to be adjusted as needed):
  1. Journey of Faith will get the needed info to Jitasa in time so they can finish the 2021 numbers by January 31.
  2. The finance sub-committee will prepare a preliminary budget between January 31 and February 5.
  3. The board will meet and discuss the budget on February 5th. This meeting will be longer than the usual 2 hours.
  4. The congregational meeting to approve the budget will happen on February 13.
4. Church naming issue with financial institutions
  1. PNC Bank and the payroll company still have the church's accounts listed under its old name.
  2. The IRS is sending a name change statement to us in the mail. Once that goes to the payroll company, we can change the name with the bank. That will allow us to change the account signers to the new board members.
Giving Letter and Budget Development (Rosalie Karunas)
1. We have sent out about 70 giving letters to people this week, to solicit giving pledges and one-time gifts.
2. The pledges will go to Matt Hoostal so that we can consider them in the budget discussions in February.
By-Laws (Rosalie Karunas)
1. Rosalie contacted Jeff Zimmerman in the Disciples of Christ IL/WI Region to talk about the bylaws. He has experience with the development of church bylaws as the regional minister for new church starts.
2. We still plan to present new bylaws to the congregation in June.
Building Update (Alex McCauslin)
1. Michael Ulmer has started as the church maintenance person. He will be in every Friday to clean.
2. The heating at the church got fixed and Michael was key in making that happen.
3. The building team is in the process of re-evaluating building rental pricing and technology use by renters (e.g. projector and sound equipment).
Communications Update (Adam Goforth)
1. Adam and Susana have been meeting and discussing church communications, with a focus on online communication.
2. For the first half of 2022, they want to focus on these things:
  1. Optimizing the email newsletter
  2. Ramping up social media usage
  3. Making the website more useful and friendly for people not currently in the church community
3. The board was generally supportive of these goals
4. Adam and Susana will work together on accomplishing those goals by the end of June.
Pastor’s Report (Alex McCauslin)
1. The Daytime Warming Center in December went very smoothly. There is still no location for the Warming Center in March. Sheri very much wants to find another location for it, but Journey of Faith has offered our building as a fallback if she can't.
2. On the Sunday after Christmas the church wrapped and delivered Christmas presents to people in the West Willow neighborhood.
3. December went well in general, though Alex wishes she had more time to reach out to shut-ins.
In-person services
1. With the current COVID numbers, do we want to re-think in-person services?
2. The board discussed several options for how we could worship at this time.
3. The consensus was to continue meeting in person now, but to monitor State and CDC guidelines and adjust as needed.
Congregational meeting
1. We'll create a one-pager with 2-5 sentence overviews of each of the board committees and the ministry partner projects, describing what happened last year and what is planned for this year.
2. Action item: Melanie Odom-Groh will gather the statements and create the one-pager.
Other Items
1. Replacement for Minneth
  1. No updates yet. Alex and Jo Ella will talk about this topic next week.
2. Worship team
  1. Dave has recovered enough that he should be in the services each week.
  2. Alex will talk to Jason about his pay rate in the future, given that he's not running the whole worship anymore.
3. Jo Ella Coles' non-profit training
  1. This training has started, and is a multi-year process. This is part of the plan to split out A Servant's Heart into a separate non-profit.
Debrief and Close (Alex McCauslin)

Meeting End: 12:44pm