Report from the Board of Trustees

March 2004

Come Build the Future of Your Community

In February your Board spent a weekend in retreat and began to look at what are the next steps for this community as we move from a family church (50 and under) to a pastoral church (50-150). We spent time getting to know one another and in prayer and meditation. We used some exercises that involved developing our skills in discerning what are our next steps. Spiritual discernment is calling upon the Holy Spirit to lead or give direction on a matter. It is how Spirit shows and guides a community.

We vision that all our support groups (formerly teams) will function as ministries. By this we mean that each ministry will involve prayer, and prayer support as part of their regular activity. We see each member uplifted and supported and each ministry growing in Spiritual awareness and power.

This community has already effectively used spiritual discernment in the ministerial search process. Using that model we will ask ourselves several questions. Why should we become a pastoral church? We realize that this is already happening but we have the opportunity to allow Spirit to guide the change. Our primary purpose is not to grow in size but to serve through expanded worship, prayer, education, and fellowship. How do we grow people and space while focusing on our ministry? How do we ensure our mission, visions, and values are incorporated into our strategic plan? How do we test and evaluate our plan?

So what will our model for implementation of the pastoral church look like? That is up to all of us to create together. Your board and minister invite you to participate in our town meetings in the coming months and also consider participating in visioning ministry activities, yet to be planned. We will begin by gathering some concrete data via one or more surveys. This will tell us who we are by age, family, demographics etc.

So start visualizing the unlimited potential that we are now unfolding and be prepared to share your vision. However, to move our vision we will need to take specific steps and make some exciting choices. Join our town meeting on March 7th as the process unfolds.

Rev. Morgan and your Board

board@unityofappleton.org

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RECAP FROM BOARD RETREAT

Priorities for the upcoming year:

• Plan for and execute administrative growth that allows us to transition into a Pastoral Church and maintain acceptable service levels.
• Focus on the Board of Trustees as a Ministry.
• Focus on all support groups (formerly teams) as Ministries.
• Further discussion on Core Ministries is needed. We defined what our core Ministry priorities would be but additional work must be done on this prior to implementation.
  • We agreed that we need to redefine our Ministries to accomplish better synergy and efficiency of human resources as we prepare to begin a concerted effort of transition into a Pastoral Church.
  • Core Ministry Priorities:
    • Worship
    • Prayer
    • Fellowship
    • Education
  • Education may be expanded to include Book Nook and Library along with Youth and Adult education under the leadership of a board member. Reasoning for this is as follows:
    • More effectiveness and efficiency of human resources
    • Less pressure on team leaders
    • Increased support from the community and Board on this Ministry
    • Structure allows for multiple interests to be addressed and synergy of the whole
    • Empowerment through a larger vision of education
  • Commitment to a newcomer's strategy – we need to further define a process.