BOARD MEETING MINUTES: April 2, 2023

Attendees: Korderro Brown, Tenia Dewolf, Greg Fisher, Adam Goforth, Raphael Guillen, Matt Hoostal, Melanie Odom-Groh, Anna Wysocki

Start time: 12:40pm

Opening Prayer: Melanie Odom-Groh

The team has started working on new bylaws and has started discussing the section related to church membership.
In the next meeting the team hopes to finalize the membership section and start on the church board (or church council) description.

The church has created a Nextdoor account. Larry is taking point on getting our business page verified and posting to it.
Adam is also working on streamlining online donations and rental payments.

Raphael has looked into participation in Ann Arbor Pride in August. It will cost $100 to have a table there, and if the church gets one, it would be good to have materials like pamphlets to hand out or merchandise to sell.
Melanie mentioned that the church has a cotton candy machine, so that could possibly be made and given away. The church would have to look at regulations around giving away or selling food to see if a permit is needed.
The church will have an LGBT Pride service in June, which Raphael will be leading.
The meditative art projects during the Sunday service will continue through April.

The Daytime Warming Center has ended.
The church has an advertisement in both Groundcover issues this month.
Anna, Melanie Odom-Groh, and Linda White have created an initial plan for children's ministry during Sunday services. There will be a rotation of three volunteers working during each service, with two downstairs with the small children and one upstairs with the older children.
There is a man camping in tents in the church parking lot. He started camping there just before the warming center started on March 1 and continues to be there. Originally he was to stay for a single night, but has stayed for over a month. He has three cats he doesn't want to part with, so he can't go to a shelter. Anna will contact some people in the homeless community and see if there's a campsite somewhere he can go to.
There have been talks with the Ann Arbor Public Library to do an art exhibit featuring the Art on a Journey artists. No date for an exhibit has been set, but it is possible that the exhibit could happen in the next couple of weeks.
A Servant's Heart has its own bank account and its leaders have been focused on grant writing recently.
The West Willow Health Clinic will be opening on April 11th.
The Director of Social entrepreneurship for the Disciples of Christ denomination will be visiting Journey of Faith in June.
Kord and Sheri Wander will be meeting this week to talk about Peace House.

Peace House received a letter a couple of weeks ago stating that Peace House owes $3,900 in property taxes, which are supposedly 2022 property taxes, but the church believes that all property taxes have been paid through 2022. Matt has asked the Washtenaw County Treasurer for more information about the new tax bill, but has not yet received an answer.
The church received confirmation that Peace House has received tax exempt status starting in 2023.
There was discussion of Peace House's finances, and Sheri Wander's finances in particular, which are tighter after the Daytime Warming Center season ends. Matt has sent Peace House $5,000 out of the money the church owes them.
The board believes that a PPP loan was received in 2020 to pay Sheri wages, but it's unclear what happened with that money. In Matt had with her, Sheri said she wasn't aware of the loan.
Action Item: Matt will talk to Jo Ella Coles to figure out what happened with the PPP loan.

There was some discussion about the car camper program and the people currently camping in the parking lot. The board had previously decided to shut down the parking lot camping program, but has had difficulty enforcing the shutdown with a couple of people. The church is paying a monthly fee for the portable toilet in the parking lot, and would like to eliminate that expense if it is no longer needed.
Action Item: Tenia and Anna will talk and decide what to do about the remaining campers.
Timothy has been recruited to help with more of the finances, which should relieve Matt of some of the burden of that work. However, Matt is still filling two roles, that of Treasurer and Financial Secretary. There is still more work to do to get the church's financial leadership in order.
Greg explained that he thinks the previous bylaws of the church were not properly suspended, so they are still in effect. This is due to a) the old bylaws not having provisions for repealing the bylaws and b) it being unclear if the church membership was properly notified of the meeting when the bylaws suspension was voted on, since written notices were not mailed to all church members' houses.

According to the 2010 Bylaws, the board needs to approve a 7-person search committee to find a new pastor for the church. Three of those must come from the board and four from the rest of the congregation.
As the chairperson of the board, Melanie must nominate the committee members to be approved by the board.
Melanie volunteered to be on the search committee. Tenia also volunteered to be on the search committee. Raphael and Anna from the current board were nominated, but no definite decisions were made about the search committee's makeup.

Kord wants to strengthen the definition of what the Transition Team is working on. He's also thinking about people's individual roles and what their responsibilities are.
As organizational improvements continue to be made at the church, that will free up more of Kord's time for doing things like writing church newsletters and planning out the sermon series.

Melanie asked the board members to share where they felt tension in today's meeting and where God showed up.

The next board meeting will be on May 7, at 12:30pm at the church.

Meeting end: 2:20pm