Board Meeting Minutes: February 5, 2022

Attendees: Susana Adame, Jo Ella Coles, Greg Fisher, Adam Goforth, Matt Hoostal, Rosalie Karunas, Alex McCauslin, Melanie Odom-Groh

Meeting start: 9:36am

  1. Opening Devotion

  2. Staff Presentation: Susana Adame, Journey of Faith Administrator

    1. Susana gave an overview of the office administrator position's responsibilities:

      1. Building management: cleaning, maintenance, rentals, negotiating with building guests

      2. Administration: managing bills, email and paper newsletters, church email, church calendar, social media, maintaining church directory, buying supplies, managing rentals

      3. Homelessness ministry: answering the door, helping guests, organizing events (warming center, benefit concerts)

  3. Reports

    1. Communications (Adam Goforth)

      1. Upcoming: website updates and social media

      2. It would be helpful if other board members considered how they could help with creating content for the website and social media.

    2. Building and Personnel (Greg Fisher)

      1. There is a disparity of pay between the musicians Dave and Jason. Jason's pay was recently raised to $150 per week, but Dave is making less than that. It would make sense to raise Dave's pay.

      2. We're pleased with the performance of Mike Ulmer, the maintenance person.

      3. We have workers' compensation insurance for Alex, but it's unclear whether Rose or Susana are covered, since they're not full-time employees. If they're not, it introduces risk for both the church and the workers. Greg will be investigating this and will report his findings to the board.

      4. Jo Ella Coles: there are a couple of issues around student interns:

        1. We have liability if things happen at the church.

        2. Schools are now expecting more than previously that student interns should be paid.

        3. There are data privacy issues, not only for interns but for all personal data the church handles.

      5. Jo Ella Coles: we should talk about employee performance evaluations. We should have a clear process for evaluating employees, but we don't right now. In the case of a problematic employee, it opens us to certain risks if we don't have a way to evaluate and respond to performance problems.

    3. Ministry Teams (Jo Ella Coles)

      1. The priority in the last couple of months has been around securing additional funding. We've been applying for grants. We're looking for funding for a) the homelessness ministry and b) increased community engagement. We also need to do DEI work, in particular around addressing racial inequities.

      2. If there's an area we need help, it's around getting more volunteers. For example, we'd like to evaluate our web sites on accessibility and implement recommendations from an accessibility report we have received, and we could use help with that. We have various projects related to our ministries that we need help with.

    4. Pastor’s Report (Alex McCauslin)

      1. The last month has been heavy administratively, doing a lot of work with Jitasa.

      2. Alex has created a new work schedule which lays out the types of work she'll do each day of the week.

    5. Bylaws (Rosalie Karunas)

      1. Rosalie has been in contact with Jeff Zimmerman and they will be meeting soon to talk about the church bylaws.

      2. Jo Ella Coles: The Art Gallery and A Servant's Heart are also going to be working on bylaws, so it might be beneficial to think about those ministries together with the church bylaws, and use some of the same resources for creating them that we're using for the church bylaws.

  4. Finance Update and Provisional Budget Presentation

    1. Jitasa has provided a best estimate of the 2021 finances. The overall numbers should be quite accurate, but their categorization is not necessarily accurate, so that will continue to be updated. In particular, the investment classifications will continue to be updated going forward. There's a fair amount that is still classified under "Uncategorized Income", so that money will be put into the correct categories over time.

    2. Based on the 2021 finance report, Matt has prepared a provisional 2022 budget.

    3. Melanie Odom-Groh made a motion that the board approve the use of this provisional budget for grant applications until final budget approval can be obtained through a congregational meeting. A vote was taken and the motion was adopted unanimously.

  5. DEI Book: The Conversation

    1. Possible dates for focused discussion were proposed: Sunday Feb 27 at noon, Saturday Mar 5 at noon, and Sunday Mar 6 at noon.

    2. Jo Ella Coles expressed a desire to bring in a facilitator to guide the board in having these conversations. We should be able to use some of our grant money for hiring a facilitator.

    3. Jo Ella Coles: Some of the student interns said they would like to be involved in these conversations. Could we extend an invitation to people outside of the board?

    4. Adam Goforth: Maybe we could consider first having an initial conversation as a board, and then after that have a larger conversation with a bigger group.

    5. Alex McCauslin: Maybe the other way around would be better.

    6. Jo Ella Coles: I lean more towards a smaller conversation with the board first, especially since a part of this is about building relationships and trust.

    7. Alex McCauslin: Let's talk to a facilitator about an initial session as a board, then a larger group afterwards.

    8. Action item: each board member will respond to the recent meeting agenda email with their availability for each of the 3 suggested meeting days, so that Jo Ella can bring suggested meeting times to potential facilitators.

  6. Congregational Meeting

    1. Due to uncertainty around the Jitasa work, we'll delay setting a congregational meeting date until the March board meeting.

  7. Debrief and Closing Prayer

Meeting end: 11:52am