May 12, 2016 Vestry Meeting for St James Episcopal Church
The Vestry met and shared a meal prepared by Charles Hall while offering our “God moments.”
The meeting started at 7:00 pm with a prayer. Penny Trant sent her apologies. We reviewed the April Vestry minutes and passed them, then Lynn gave the financial summary and explained the accounting summary sheet. The pledges are up to date and the plate donations are more than budgeted. There are several line items in expenses that appear high because they are budgeted monthly but paid quarterly so at the end of the year they even out. There are bids coming in for the little church project. The financial reports were accepted.
We discussed the option of buying an Arctic Air Freezer from Ebay for $1099 +tax with no shipping cost. The Vestry approved this purchase. Vivienne will purchase this and arrange for the old freezer to be removed.
The situation with the termites in the big church was discussed. An extended warranty is available for $681.00 to be renewed annually. Bruce Roberts and Dave Nelson are meeting with the Termite company that holds the existing warranty. Bruce reported that for the company to extend the warranty, they will need to do an in-depth inspection. The little church would not be included in the warranty as it has a separate warranty from previous work. Bruce, Dave and Jim Cunningham have done many projects around the church lately, including hanging the Sunday School notice board and an extra picnic bench; Al Casas put up a new mailbox. We are blessed by hard working members of our community.
We have been doing well with our articles for the Window and we reviewed the subsequent list of contributors. We talked about making announcements when Lori is absent. Vivienne will do May 22nd both at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
Lori talked about the Capital Campaign for the diocese. The vestry will have a presentation about this from the diocesan representative, Davey Gearhardt. The campaign company estimates that St. James can raise $600,000 over a 5 year period. The diocese tracks all of the money for the campaign, one of the advantages of doing the campaign is to reinvigorate the congregation behind a specific project. The next phase is the fall of 2016. Lori would like to invite them to talk with the Vestry and other members of the congregation. There was discussion about the timing of the meeting. We agreed to have them come on the August 11th vestry meeting and include several other members of the congregation. In previous years we have combined the July and August meetings but as the August meeting will be the Capital Campaign presentation, we will also keep the July meeting.
We also need to do a mutual ministry review which has not been done for 3 years. Someone from the diocese meets with the Rector and wardens and then comes to a vestry meeting to discuss what can be improved upon and what is going well. The mutual ministry review would be October 13th, 2016. Lori knows someone to facilitate this.
The vestry reports were accepted after a couple of questions and brief updates. This concluded the business portion of the Vestry meeting and Lori left as she was not feeling well.
Meg then reviewed the major ministry projects; we checked in with the solo events.
Scott is planning the endowment event and has had trouble getting hold of the diocesan rep for the will writing workshop. Jan Pearson set up this previously so Scott will contact Jan.
Evelyn is planning the volunteer luncheon and Meg sent some information. Meg can buy the cake for the 8:00 a.m. service and after 10:30 there is ice cream. This is on June 19th. Nancy suggested doing a small blurb on the St. James’ Cares program again to highlight this; there are 45 volunteers.
Ashley has the incoming gathering in November. When are all the pledges in? We think it is late October. Lori is the current contact for the Stewardship committee.
Bruce’s charter document is still under review and there was a discussion about how to write the remaining major activities in the church.
Vivienne explained what we are doing about the newcomer tracking.
Charles and Elaine will have the newcomer event on June 18th, but there is a funeral being planned for that day so the newcomer event will have to be changed to accommodate the funeral.
John and Meg will work on the newcomer packet to get that finished.
Karen and Nancy talked about the welcome packet for visitors.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30p.m. We then celebrated Compline in the little church.
~Vivienne Paratore, Jr. Warden