Church Council Minutes
October 5, 2009
Blackstone Valley United Methodist Church
Church Council Meeting Minutes
October 5, 2009
7pm
Members Present: Mike Sherry, Dean Fortin, Steve Shangraw, Mark Gentry, Adele Gentry, Barbara Fortin, Peg Codner, Danielle Wilson, Rev. Michele Ewers, Rev.Tom McKeown, Brian Murphy, Carolyn Mitchell, Beth Snider
Listen: We began by watching a portion of the Alex Hamilton DVD from Annual Conference
A discussion of the Welcoming Ministry followed. They will now be taking mugs to people who have newly attended worship. It will contain a paper in it with information about our church. The mugs will also be for sale to church members who would like to buy them. This will help to off set the cost of the mugs that are given away. They will approach Finance for the funds for the mugs.
They would also like to do a new directory with Olin Mills. The pictures will be taken on December 7th and 8th and each family will receive a free 8x10 and will have the option to purchase other photos if they like.
Olin Mills will also provide a free online directory to us which is password protected. There will be one person in our church who will be able to update it and all access requires a password so security is not an issue.
A motion was made to proceed with the new directory, it was seconded and approved.
Respond:
A. Business
1. The minutes from the previous meeting were reviewed
and approved with the following correction:
Page 2, paragraph 2, first sentence ceiling should be replaced with
roof.
B. Stewardship of Our Resources
1. Church Sound System - this item needs to be presented to the Finance Ministry.
2. Projector- Dean Fortin has obtained a projector with a remote for use during the service.
C. Vision and Mission
1. Communications
Newsletter- Ann Cook, Peg Codner and Charlie Ewers
Publicity- they are looking for someone to assume this task
Website- Ray Talke does not want to be webmaster any more- need to look for a new webmaster.
October 14th is their next meeting.
We also need to think about Facebook and Twitter.
2. Quarterly Praise Night
Power of Praise has had low attendance.
New format will be on a Friday night like a “coffeehouse” and will occur quarterly.
First one will be December 4th to open the Christmas season.
Possibility of trying it on the town common in the summer.
A motion was made and seconded with all in favor of this proposal.
3. Adopt Luann’s School
Luann Belseth teaches at Northbridge Elementary School and the school nurse there had noticed that children are coming to school without snacks due to their families not having the money to provide them. She approached Luann to see if we could help by providing some snacks.
There was extensive discussion about this project.
The major issues that emerged:
1.) Who will own this and ensure that it succeeds?
2.) Are we going to be able to let the children know where the snacks
are coming from and that they were given because of the love of Jesus
Christ.
It was decided to wait to vote on this until the above issues could be clarified.
4. CPR
Danielle Wilson would like to arrange for a CPR course to be conducted here on October 17th from 10-3pm in old Fellowship Hall.
A motion was made, seconded and approved to proceed with this.
There will be no Church Council meeting in November as we will be meeting for Charge Conference.
Meeting adjourned at 8:55pm.