PRESBYTERY COUNCIL
March
11, 2008
Presbytery
office
The Council of the Presbytery
Minnesota Valleys was called to order at 10:00 a.m. by
the chairRoger Grussing.
Those present included:
Rev. Dawn Carder, Presbytery
Moderator
LeRoy Ennenga, Presbytery
Vice-Moderator
Rev. Sue Coller, Executive
Presbyter
Rev. Pam Prouty, Stated
Clerk
|
Class
of 2008
Grayson
Osteraas
Connie
Seltz
Rev. Norma
Spurgin
|
Class
of 2009
Rev. Roger
Grussing
Rev. Bob
Bartlett
|
Class
of 2010
Rev. Al
Jergenson
Rev. Christina
Berry
Donna
Hendel
Kathy
Terpstra
Rev. Randy
Lubbers |
Those excused included: Nancy
Chamberlain (Class of 2009), Dale Champ (Class of 2009)
Rev. Dan Billings (Class of 2009) Rallah
Madison (Class of
2008), Rev. Dawn Linder (Class of
2008)
We started with introductions and devotions by
Dawn Carder.
The proposed agenda was approved with moving the
conversation about the Manual and By-Laws to the
beginning.
The minutes from the January 8, 2007 were
approved.
Manual of Operations and
By-Laws
Dennis Wilson, a member of the Bills and
Overtures committee was present to give us an overview
of the proposed changes to the Manual of Operations and
the By-Laws.
We had discussion and proceeded by consensus
through the proposed changes to the Manual and By-Laws;
the changes were recorded and another draft will be
presented at the April Council
meeting.
Six-pack
conversation
Connie Seltz a member of the six-pack gave a
general overview of what is going
on.
COUNCIL VOTED to pray for each
other, pray for the work God wants us to do and guidance
to do it.
We will pray for the Twin Cities Area Presbytery
Council and for their mission and share with them
ours.
Roger
Grussing led us in prayer. By consensus we
agreed to keep the document “Discerning the Future”;
(this document can be found on the
Presbytery website) in front of
us.
Committee Mash Task
Force
Sue gave an oral report about the progress of
this task force. By
consensus we know that we need to keep the summary from
the Committee Mash Task Force in
front of us. COUNCIL VOTED to have its annual retreat on June
11-12 beginning at 10:00 a.m. at the
Presbytery office; Randy Lubbers, Dawn
Carder, Sue Coller and Kathy
Terpstra will be on
a Council Retreat Planning Team; Kathy will be the
chair.
(Appendix A is a summary of the work of the
Committee Mash Task Force).
Leadership Team
We talked about the 2008 Council meeting time and
places.
COUNCIL VOTED to rescind
their action from the January meeting regarding
moving the location of Council meetings and to keep our
schedule for the 2008 meetings as is. This item will
be on the agenda for 2009.
Nomination
Committee
This item will continued to be tabled until
we have figured out what it is we
are doing.
Request from the Reading
Congregation
The Session from the Reading congregation
has requested to have members of Council come and speak with them about denominational
issues.
Sue Coller, Norma
Spurgin/Roger
Grussing, and
Clay Rosa/Dennis Wilson will meet
with them on March 26.
Executive Presbyter
The Executive Presbyter presented the following
report:
Executive Presbyter
Report
Council Meeting
March 11,
2008
1.
Gulf
Coast Trip
– article in VB on the distribution of funds
donated from Minnesota Valleys
and East Iowa Presbyteries for the
rebuilding effort.
a.
Total contributed: $27,126.23
b.
Spent:
$2,624.89
c.
Left for use of
the PDA Construction Managers
at their discretion
:
$24,501.34
d.
The dollars
spent for gas is included in the
Budget and Finance report
.
130 volunteers participated, 66 in the Minnesota
Valleys and East Iowa group
Worked on 10 homes and one high
school
There has been some interest in that group to
have another trip. The article in the Valley Bridge is asking people
to respond to the presbytery office if they are
interested.
The Congregational Resources
committee will talk at their April meeting about whether
or not they want to plan
one.
2.
For Your Information:
a.
Natural Church Development (NCD) – Coach Training was
March 8 and March 9. Cluster meetings to introduce
NCD are being set up.
Cluster 5 will have their
orientation on March 29 in Luverne,
10-1p.m.
b. 6-Pac Meeting
– Feb. 17/18 in Eau Claire, WI –
Summary is included in the pre-council mailing. We spent several hours in small groups looking
at the “Discerning the Future” resource, which
lists several major shifts facing denominational leaders, and
talking about how we might respond to those
shifts.
You can download that resource at this link: http://www.minnesotavalleys.org/6-pac.php#Resources. The
link under “Discerning the Future” has the questions we used in
discussing them. This is something that might
be interesting for the council
to spend some time on at a future
meeting.
COUNCIL VOTED
to grant permission to the Prairie
Dog Group to administer communion at their meeting
on Thursday, March
20, 2008.
Stated
Clerk
The Stated
Clerk presented the
following
report:
STATED
CLERK’S REPORT
TO
THE PRESBYTERY COUNCIL
MARCH
11, 2008
1.
Attached you will find
for your information the
minister roll (Appendix B)
as the Committee on
Ministry approved at their February
meeting
.
This was up to date as
of that meeting
.
2.
The annual reports
were due from the congregations in
February; I have not received
annual reports from the following congregations
:
Brainerd, South Long
Lake, Browns Valley, Holland, Lake Crystal, Milroy, Russell and Tracy
.
Council needs to talk
about how they will handle the per capita from these
congregations since their per capita payments are based on the membership number the congregations are to submit in their
annual statistical report
.
3.
I will be attending
the Synod Minute Review at the end
of March and the Board of
Pension
training in
May.
COUNCIL VOTED to base
the following congregation’s membership numbers on their 2006
membership numbers since they did
not submit their annual reports.
The congregations
include: Brainerd, South Long Lake, Brown’s Valley, Holland, Lake Crystal,
Milroy, Russell and Tracy.
Roger Grussing and
Pam Prouty will write a letter to
these congregations.
Presbytery
Moderator
Dawn Carder
attended the installation of the Rev. Terry
Olthoff
COUNCIL VOTED
to dismiss the administrative
commission to install the
Rev. Terry
Olthoff with thanks. The
minutes are on file.
COUNCIL VOTED to
receive the reports from the
Executive Presbyter, Stated Clerk
and Presbytery Moderator.
Personnel
COUNCIL VOTED
to ask Joleen Nowak from Silver Lake to serve on
the Personnel Committee.
Communication
Task Force
We will talk
about the summary at our next meeting.
Budget
and
Finance
Grayson
Osteraas presented
the following report:
BUDGET & FINANCE
REPORT
TO COUNCIL
March 11, 2008
Motion to accept the Profit
& Lose Statement and the Balance Sheet for month ending February
29, 2008.
Motion to accept the Per
Capita report and the General
Mission Giving – Per Capita
Giving to Date report.
Motion
to accept the Per
Capita payments by the month from
the First Presbyterian Church of St. James and the First Presbyterian Church of Beaver
Creek.
Motion to accept the Per
Capita payments in four payments
from the First Presbyterian Church of Round Lake.
Motion to have Virginia
Molitor pay
the per capita in March that has been collected for Synod and
General Assembly.
Motion to have
Virginia Molitor pay each month there after the per capita collected and the per capita paid up in September,
2008.
Gulf Trip Report:
There was $15,668.00
of Home Depot Gift Cards purchased
before the trip. There was
$3,000.00 set aside in
our 2008 budget, Social Action
Ministry donated $2370 from the Peace Fund plus
another $10,000.00 for expenses on
the trip down, during and
back. There was
a total of $5,382.33 spent
so that leaves $9987.67.
Motion to have $9987.67
transferred back into our
reserves. That would clear out
our account #5072: Pres. Disaster Relief.
COUNCIL VOTED to
accept all the above recommendations.
COUNCIL VOTED
to transfer $2300.00 from Net Worth to a new L account. These are dollars from
the 2007 budget line item
of E1180 G.A. Commissioners
Orientation. This was to be
transferred at the end of the
2007 year for use by the
Alternates that are going to the
2008 General Assembly in
California.
Click
here for Financial
Reports
We adjourned
at 2:20 p.m.
Our next
Council meeting will be April
8, 2008 at the Presbytery
office from 10-2.
Respectfully
submitted,
Pamela R. Prouty
Stated Clerk
APPENDIX A
Committee Mash Task
Force
Attached are
notes from the latest meeting
of the Committee MASH:
Congregational Resources,
Congregational Growth and
Development, Committee on
Ministry, and Social Action
Ministry Committee, along with
council representation.
First is a
summary of our first meeting on
December 11, 2007.
Second is a
summary of our second meeting
on February 2, 2008.
Third are thoughts about where we are
so far.
This is a very
important conversation for the future of our presbytery, and
because of the depth the
conversations have gone to, it has reached the point where it needs a
broader participation than just
a few committee and council
representatives. We are
looking at the deeper issue of who
we are as a presbytery and how we
see our role at this unique time in the life of our
presbytery.
At the various
committee meetings of those taking
part in the Committee Mash, people
have been interested, and even
excited, about the direction
the conversation is going.
At a recent meeting of Congregational Resources,
several times people commented on
what an exciting time these
conversations represent for the presbytery, especially
when we talked about the possibility of a Presbytery
mission statement that could give us a guideline for how
we focus our resources – time, energy, people, money,
etc. Our newest member,
Rev. Leah Hauser, also suggested that before we go that
direction, we should think about holding Servant
Leadership workshops around the presbytery, to focus
people on what it is we are called to be.
An idea well worth considering, we all
thought.
So read through this,
and if you have any questions, feel free to contact any
of the Committee Mash participants.
From Committee on Ministry:
Richard Underdahl-Peirce and *Celeste Lasich
From Congregational Growth and
Development:
Shirley Luhmann and
Christina
Berry
From Congregational Resources: Mark Chamberlain and
Karen Ferkinhoff
From Social Action Ministry:
*Randy Lubbers
From Council: Sue Coller, *Dawn
Linder, and Christina Berry
(* were not able to be at the last
meeting)
Summary of December 11 2007
Conversation
The Committee Mash has been
focusing on the overlap between four committees:
Congregational Growth and Development,
Congregational Resources, Committee on Ministry, and
Social Action Ministry Committee.
In the course of that conversation, several
agreements and recommendations were made that related
directly to the immediate task of looking at committee
responsibilities and where they would best reside:
·
Everything related to Health
Ministries would be handled by Social Action
Ministry. It had been handled
by both Congregational Growth and Development and Social
Action Ministry, leading to some confusion by those
seeking support for parish nursing.
·
Committee on Ministry would have a
pastor focus, Congregational Growth and Development would have a
congregation focus
and would be intentional about keeping communication open between
the two committees
·
Grants that were “automatic” (camp
scholarships, Synod school scholarships, etc.) –
criteria and
guidelines will be developed, and then Virginia will be asked to dispense
them according to guidelines as long as funds were
available.
·
The Council was asked to
discern if New
Church Development is what our presbytery is called to pursue at
this time,
and if it is determined that it is, to ask Presbytery to form a New
Church Development Committee charged with that one
task. Guidelines for nominating people to
serve were suggested as well as a philosophy for
the committee.
In the course of conversation, the
participants realized that just shifting
responsibilities from one committee or another did not
address the more critical needs of the presbytery as it
related to the work of the four committees.
Four critical needs were identified
that the task force felt were not being adequately
addressed by the Presbytery.
These are the needs for good:
·
Congregational Strategies
·
Pastoral Strategies
·
Mission Strategies
·
Relationship Strategies
These other needs were also
identified:
1.
Ways to connect with
congregations
2.
Ways to connect with pastors
3.
Ways to help congregations identify
needs vs. wants and help congregations meet the challenges of those
needs.
Summary of February 2 2008
Conversation
Present: Committee on Ministry:
Richard Underdahl-Peirce,
Celeste Lasich excused
Congregational Growth and
Development: Shirley Luhmann,
Christina Berry
Congregational Resources:
Mark Chamberlain, Karen Ferkinhoff
Council:
Sue Coller, Christina Berry, Dawn Linder
excused
Continued conversation regarding
Congregational Resources and Congregational Growth
and
Development:
Need a much stronger link between
Congregational Growth and Development and Congregational
Resources.
QUESTION: Do we have the people needed to
make the necessary contacts with churches?
What kinds of contacts are really necessary?
QUESTION:
Have we really
decided what the committee task is (whatever its
make-up)? What is the presbytery responsibility for
resourcing congregations in the areas Congregational
Resources has recently focused on?
What is the PRIMARY role of the
presbytery and its committees? (recognizing that in any
system all three will
be present to a degree – some more, some
less)
1)
Permission-giving
agency? (you tell us what you want to do
– we’ll support
you)
a)
WHO INITIATES – Primarily the
Congregation
2)
Regulatory
agency? (you ask permission before doing
anything)
a)
WHO INITIATES – Primarily the Congregation –
Presbytery watches and
observes
