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Bethlehem Lutheran Church Council Meeting
Jan. 8, 2008
Present: John Hulbert, Roy Wenzel, John Natterstad, Dan Kipperberg, Edi Dirkes, Gretchen Mitchell, Jill Maas, Michelle Bach, Patti Pote, Pastor Snider, Rick Hart, Larry Beach, and Amy Goheen.
President John Natterstad called the meeting to order at 7:00pm.
John Natterstad led the opening prayer.
Treasurers Report: John Hulbert handed out a copy of the year end budget for 2007. He is uncertain if this budget sheet reflects the final numbers for 2007. He has left a message with Butch Martin to clarify this for him. John will cover the year end budget sheet at a later council meeting when he is positive of the ending numbers. Patti Pote said that the mission’s balance of $700 should actually be about $433. John said he would verify this with Butch. If the balance sheet is correct as is, then we currently have a positive balance of $25,575. The Finance Committee has a meeting on Jan 16th with the audit committee. John will email the council members with a corrected budget.
Jill Maas asked if the $2000 designated income for evangelism will be reflected as a carry over on the budget sheet for 2008. John said even though it is not listed on this budget sheet it will be listed on future budget sheets as a carry over.
Thrivent Financial Proposal: John introduced Philip Edlund from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. Mr. Edlund is a Congregational Relationship Manager for Thrivent. He handed out a financial packet explaining the GivingPlus program offered by Thrivent. Details of this program are as follows:
-The GivingPlus program supplements member donations to enrolled Lutheran organizations, which could include Bethlehem Lutheran Christian School.
-For every $2 donated, Thrivent Financial will contribute $1 to a member’s qualifying organization of their choice up to $300 annually.
-In order to qualify for this program, members must be 16 years of age and have a qualifying investment account with Thrivent Financial.
Mr. Edlund said funds that are designated to Bethlehem Christian School could be gifted back to the church as a gratuity for providing the building space for the school and leveraging the funds that the church uses toward the building fund for the school. The check from Thrivent would go directly to the school and then the school would need to write a check to the church for the gift. Members who are interested in opening accounts with Thrivent Financial should contact Ben Richards who is the Financial Consultant for Thrivent.
Rick Hart made a motion to have the church participate in the Thrivent Financial GiftGiving Plus program. Patti Pote seconded. Discussion ensued. (Q) Has the school been notified of this program? Mr. Edlund said Pastor Walles and he originally spoke with the school when they were first considering this program, but they will need to be refreshed about the program’s details.
A motion was made to end debate on this discussion. The motion was seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
The motion to have the church participate in the GiftGiving Plus program passed unanimously.
Pastor Snider volunteered to be the contact person for Mr. Edlund to schedule future meetings with the congregation. John Natterstad thanked Mr. Edlund for coming.
Pastor’s Report:
See Attached. Pastor Snider read over his written report. Pastor Snider confirmed the call committee has received the five names from the Bishop. He said the next new membership class will be held on a Monday evening.
Standing Report:
Property and Grounds-Dan Kipperberg said the Wilcox house is officially no longer there. There will be work a party this Saturday beginning at 8 or 9am. They have been doing some miscellaneous maintenance around the church including painting of the gym, hallways, and stair walls. The school rooms will be painted this summer.
Music & Worship- Edi Dirkes said that Abby Finley joined us in December and she is a wonderful blessing. We have had some technical problems and think this may have something to do with some of the plugs or cords under the platform. Tom Lucas has volunteered to look under the crawl space to check on this. They have temporarily canceled the talent program. They will try to reschedule this after a break from the holidays.
Evangelism- Jill Maas said the new membership luncheon went well. Pastor Snider commended Jill on the spectacular job of putting this together. Jill said it was a team effort. They are planning on having the greeters again at the entrance doors. This has been placed on hold, but they will start this up again soon. These are people who have a gift and a trained eye to spot new people and direct them to where they need to go. They plan on adding some signs to visibly locate where the restrooms, sanctuary, and other key areas are in the building.
Missions- Patti Pote said Witness Johnson has one more semester before she graduates. Jean and Marv from the Messiah School will be here on May 14th at the Wednesday night Vespers to educate the congregation and the kids about the “Mango Project” that the kids help support. Patti said the food dehydrating program is doing well. Germany has also begun sponsoring this program. The mission’s committee would like to sponsor and prepare the dinner for the May 14th Vespers service.
Human Recourses- Rick Hart said with all the personnel changes, we have been wrestling with this budget for the last several months. In our budget discussions we are often talking about salaries for these positions. We don’t know if these positions are under or over paid. Rick proposed that after the finalization of the 2008 budget we organize a task committee to evaluate our personnel salaries to ensure they are being compensated correctly. Come next October we may need to adjust some of these salaries; some may be more and some may be less. We need to look at the positions not the people in these positions when making the adjustments.
Comment: We also need to ensure we have an effectively implemented performance review system in place.
Social Concerns- Larry Beach said the Marysville food bank is in the negotiation stages of hiring a director. The food giving is substantially up this month at the food bank and even at church. Normally the church hands out approximately 8 bags of food a month; this month we gave out 18 bags. The food bank is still in need of drivers. Pastor Snider and Larry are working on the possibility of having food drives here at church. Pastor Snider said during one of his visits to Mount Cross Church, the congregation brought their food donations to the Alter during the offering. This is something we should consider implementing at Bethlehem for the food bank.
As a side note Larry said we need volunteers to be ushers at the 11:15 service.
Stewardship- Jill said there will be a monthly article in the Rejoice newsletter from volunteers who will be writing about why giving is important to them. We will also try to have someone speak to the congregation once a month about why they tithe.
Roy Wenzel said the year end giving statements were mailed yesterday. They have already been notified of some errors. They will be mailing these quarterly instead of annually for 2008. On January 16th the church, BLCW, and the school will be audited.
Old Business:
2008 Budget- Council will be meeting on January 22nd at 7pm to discuss the budget.
Alternate Proposal for Proceeds of Wilcox Property- Jeff Whitehead stated he felt the council did not allow enough time for the congregation to review and make a decision about using the $500,000 Wilcox money to pay down the mortgage during the last congregational meeting. After getting input from other congregation members he put together this proposal. Jeff recapped his alternate proposal for the Wilcox proceeds (see attached). Pastor Snider agreed with Jeff that the congregation should have more time to review these proposals before making these decisions.
(Q) Will it be possible to postpone the re-amortization of the loan for one year?
(A) John Hulbert said we can re-amortize at a later date.
Jeff will make his proposal at the congregation meeting on February 10th.
Budget Forum February 3, 2008-The budget forum will be scheduled for 12:15pm after the 3rd service.
New Business:
Congregation Meeting February 10, 2008 Agenda-John Natterstad covered the agenda for the February 10, 2008 meeting. Patti stated she felt it was unacceptable for leaders of our congregation to say that it is o.k. to let someone walk out of the door; that this is a normal process of transition. As a member of the body of Christ it is not o.k. As council members we should do what ever we can do to keep these people here. We have faith that God provides us with what we need. At the next congregation meeting we need to let people know that we want to keep all of these programs, and in order to do so giving needs to come up. Loss of giving is also a ramification of what happens when we let people leave.
Pastor Snider’s housing allowance- John Natterstad moved that Pastor Snider’s remuneration remain the same as December 2007, when he assumed the lead Pastor position and that 50% of his remuneration be designated as housing allowances. Rick Hart seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Membership Update-Pastor Snider said he received notification from John Pringle requesting us to remove him and his family from Bethlehem’s membership because they have moved. Pastor Snider made a motion to remove John Pringle and Family from Bethlehem’s membership. Patti Pote seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Pastor Snider received notification that Kirk and Kristin Borseth asked to be removed from Bethlehem. When he spoke with Kristin she said they didn’t want to be removed from Bethlehem’s membership, but they have recently joined the Roman Catholic Church. Pastor Snider said you can not belong to two churches of different denominations and he recommends we remove the Borseth’s from membership based on their membership with the Roman Catholic Church.
Patti Pote made a motion to remove Kirk and Kristin Borseth from Bethlehem Lutheran’s membership due to their recent membership with the Roman Catholic Church. Rick Hart seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Comment: The up keeping of the membership records is an important process. There are many things that go on with churches based on our membership numbers and we want to be represented correctly.For the Good of Order-
Edi Dirkes requested a moment of prayer for direction of our future staffing positions. Edi led the council in prayer.
Patti said she will be having surgery on January 28th to fix her arm and she asked for council members to please pray for her. There is a 98% success rate for surgery. She will not be at the February 3rd budget forum meeting.
Jill led the closing prayer.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:15pm.
Respectfully Submitted,
Michelle Bach
Council Secretary
Attachments:
Pastor Snider’s Report
Jeff Whitehead’s Wilcox Proposal
Special Council Meeting minutes of January 22, 2008.
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