Sept. 8 church council meeting notes

Darlene Garon, Mark Losagio, Julie DeGroot, Shelley Gilbert, Don Bostic, Jeff Heffelfinger, Russ Phillips, Mel Zellner, Kate Grube, Alyssa Young and Pastor John attended. Jan Carlson and Sherri Lutz were absent. Guests included mutual ministry committee members Terry DeGroot and Betty Houck.

Correspondence: Director of Spiritual Formation Christa Browne resigned today with two weeks notice. She will serve as interim Sunday school director until she can be replaced.
Pastor John proposed this motion: In order to determine the most prudent way to proceed, church council empowers the mutual ministry committee to seek the congregation’s guidance in regard to present staffing desires. This having been done, the mutual ministry committee shall report its recommendations for church council’s approval. Then, with a clear direction, the mutual ministry committee shall be empowered to create a job description (to be approved by church council) and then follow through with the employment of said person who meets the needs of the congregation (also to be approved by the church council). The time table for this is three months or less. Council unanimously approved the motion.
Christa Browne and Sally Kunkel will help with Christian education in the interim.

Mutual Ministry Committee: The committee prepared a job description for the director of spiritual formation for council’s review. Pastor recommended seeking feedback from the congregation. Terry suggests an exit review with Christa for more input.
The committee is seeking a replacement for Marie Silfies, a long-time member who is resigning.

Finance Committee: Council discussed the goal of creating a pool of volunteers to count offering who could set a rotating schedule amongst themselves.

Christian Education: Only new Sunday school teachers this year need to complete background checks, since the others were completed just a few months ago.

Property Committee: The specs of the zero-turn mower to be purchased with memorial money were reviewed so Don Bostic can do research.
The committee wants to send a thank-you note to Mark Huffsmith for his plumbing help. Huffsmith and Kunsman will install roof drains.
Don has a plan for getting the day care windows caulked.

Church blog update: Stacy Hageman will contribute choir news.
Responsible youth should be recruited to assist with updating the blog.

Council vacancies: Four members whose terms are expiring will end their service. The mutual ministry committee is pursuing candidates to replace them.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:26 p.m. The next meeting is 7 p.m. Oct. 13.

Pictures From Vacation Bible School

A Fun and Educational Time Was Had By All!

Quarterly Council Update

Over the past two years, the congregational council has made a conscious effort to be more accountable to you, the members of Holy Cross Lutheran Church. To start, we identified the many committees that comprise our church body. It was our goal to identify/review the mission of each committee and encourage monthly reports about the contributions these committees have offered to our community and Holy Cross Church. We organized several fellowship events in an attempt to introduce council members to fellow members, which offered the opportunity to get to know each other. We developed a property maintenance report log and required all council members to review our constitution on a yearly basis to ensure that our actions were consistent with the synod guidelines. In doing so, we made some difficult requests for change. Unfortunately, in today’s society, we must make every effort to protect ourselves and the members we serve. We reinstated the constitutional guidelines for counting the offering, we require all volunteers who serve our youth to have a background check, and we now require detailed receipts for expenses that are to be reimbursed. We also created a blog to inform our fellow members about church activities and important events and to share information on youth activities.

Council welcomes your prayers, thoughts and suggestions. We encourage you to visit and use the blog at holycrossmoorestown.blogspot.com. This can serve as a means of communicating and a way of getting more members, like you, involved with fulfilling the mission of Holy Cross Lutheran Church.

The Mission of Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church is to respond to the Love of God shown most fully to us in the great gift of his Son Jesus Christ. We engage in five ministry areas - Worship, Witness, Learning, Service, and Support - to boldly confess Christ as our Lord and Savior.