Board Meeting Minutes: November 20, 2022

Attendees: Tenia Dewolf, Greg Fisher, Adam Goforth, Matt Hoostal, Sarah Khan, Alex McCauslin, Melanie Odom-Groh, Anna Wysocki

Start time: 1:33pm

Opening - Melanie

Financial Focus

  • The current picture

    • Matt passed out a financial report on paper describing the church's income and expenses from January to October 2022.

    • Some questions were asked about some of the details of the report. Some were answered immediately, and others will need to be followed up on:

    • Action items

      • Follow up with Amer on what subscriptions are being paid that cost $1,825 this year.

      • Confirm what the $1,200 of Office & Storage Rent expense was. We believe it is the portable toilet rental cost, which is $100 per month.

      • Figure out what the "Bank Fees & Merchant Fees" expenses are. Alex thinks we had previously been paying late fees for credit card payments, but those are now on autopay. Matt thinks some of it might be wire transfer fees to transfer money from the PNC accounts to our partners' accounts.

  • Building loan changes

    • The building loan payments have been restructured for the next 12 months, and while the restructuring was being processed, the November payment was put on hold and has been delayed until December. In December the church will make two mortgage payments, but of the new, lower monthly amount.

  • Grants for ministries

    • There was some discussion of the grants that have been received by the church and how they are managed.

    • In the past, Jo Ella Coles has taken on the lion's share of the work to find grants, decide which ones were relevant to the church, and apply for them. Anna suggested that some of that work might be shared by others on the board.

  • Bank accounts

    • Melanie suggested that the bank account ending in 0148 be reserved for West Willow grants. Currently payroll and Jitasa are being paid out of that account, so it has general church funds in it, and it can be hard to track which money is earmarked for which purposes when it's all combined in a single account. Keeping the West Willow funds separate from the general church funds could make accounting and tracking easier. Matt will look into moving the general church funds in the 0148 account into the bank account ending in 2326 and drawing payroll and Jitasa payments from it.

    • The bank account ending in 4856 has funds for To Russia with Love in it. No progress has been made on finding someone to manage those funds.

    • Alex and Susana Adame each have a church credit card, with both their name and the church's name on them. We now have a new church office administrator, Timothy, who will need a church credit card. Alex recommended getting Timothy a card and canceling Alex's and Susana's cards, after transferring all recurring payments to Timothy's new card.

      • Known recurring payments that need to move to Timothy's card: Zoom and the alarm company.

      • Alex will cancel the MS Office 365 subscription that renews on December 1.

  • There was a discussion of employee salaries

    • We will almost certainly need to pay the new interim pastor (and the subsequent permanent pastor) around 10-15k more per year than Alex.

    • The new office administrator is making $20/hr instead of $18/hr, which is what we were paying the previous office administrator.

    • We pay the musicians who play in services, Dave and Jason, significantly below market rate and it would be good to raise their pay.

  • Hotels and Lodging expenses

    • Alex sometimes pays for a hotel stay for a homeless person. There is no formal process for determining who receives these hotel stays and Alex just makes a judgment call. Some churches have a discretionary fund for those kinds of payments, but Journey of Faith has not had such a fund.

  • Reducing expenses / balancing the budget

    • Next pastor: if we have an interim pastor next, Alex believes a part-time pastor with a 20/hr per week workload would be sufficient for preaching, pastoral care, and supporting the board. Tenia agreed with that assessment. A part-time pastor would probably cost somewhat less than Alex's current salary.

    • Brock from the Disciples Extension Fund had some suggestions when he met with some board members recently:

      • We could do a capital fundraising campaign, not only to raise money, but also to reach out to and strengthen relationships with people in the community who have some ties to the church, but are not currently supporting the church. The campaign doesn't have to be for capital improvements, it could also be for something like "the funds for an interim pastor's salary for a year".

        • The board decided to do a capital campaign in 2023. Matt will communicate that to Brock.

      • We could potentially build relationships with dying churches in the area who might give us some of their assets.

      • We could share the building with another church.

      • We could rent out rooms and increase our event rentals.

    • When the church bought the current building, one consideration was having space to rent out. The church's lawyer at the time said that as long as we rent to other non-profits, the rentals would not endanger the church's non-profit status.

Interim pastor search: Melanie

  • Melanie asked the board to approve the pastor search committee to look for a part-time interim pastor. The board unanimously approved this with no opposition voiced.

Car Campers

  • Dewey and his father James stay in the van in the parking lot. Dewey has been suspended from the property for numerous violations of community rules. Greg wants to consider some 'carve-outs' for Dewey to be on the property when James has medical appointments, to look after their dogs and help James.

  • Greg described the situation to the board and asked if the board would approve exceptions to Dewey's suspension and what that would look like.

  • The board discussed the current state of the homelessness ministry and the enforcement of the rules. Some suggestions for possible changes to the program were made:

    • Shutting down the car camping program.

    • Getting other organizations involved in managing the people and environment on the property. We could perhaps trade some resources like office space for human resources.

  • Alex raised the point that no matter what changes get made, it would be aligned with our mission to include the homeless community in the decision-making process.

  • Anna will reach out to Cynthia (a woman who has offered to help with James' situation) and the Washtenaw Camp Outreach to see if we can help James with his healthcare without letting Dewey back on site.

Next board meeting

The next meeting will be at 1pm on December 11th, in person at the church

Debrief and Closing - Alex

End Time: 5:01pm