Spiritual Life and Worship Team

Meeting Minutes of January 8, 2009

Present: Debbie Riley, Betsy Keiter, Bryan Wiggins, Sandy Hansen, Elinor Redmond, Richard Angell, John McCall

Opening Prayer: Sandy opened with a beautiful, thoughtful prayer.

Review of Minutes: November and December minutes were approved.

News from John McCall: The following items were discussed:

Summer Sabbatical: John reviewed with the committee his tentative summer sabbatical plans and asked for input regarding three Sunday mornings during the summer when we will need someone to deliver a message.

Church Directory: The church directory will be completed within 90 days. 161 households participated.

Budget: There is good news regarding the budget. Instead of a deficit of $28,000 which was predicted, we only have a deficit of $5,000. The congregation heard our budget concerns and responded with great generosity.

The 2009 budget will be a big stretch. Teams have been asked to cut 10% - 20 % of their budgets and salary increases will remain at 2%. The biggest dilemma is the Mission budget which is the only truly flexible church budget. Mission has been asked to cut 20% and to look carefully at organizations that have other funding sources available.

It seems that we should facilitate a workshop between the Mission Team and the Community Crisis Ministry Team so that we might build a bridge between them. Some members feel that the work of mission board is no longer valued. At this point CCM spends $100.000 and Mission Team spends $60,000.

New Hymnals: As of today we have raised $2000 of the $9000.00 needed to cover the cost of the hymnals. There are plans to have a Hymn Sing in late March to retire the Pilgrim Hymnal.

Confirmation: John gave us all a calendar of upcoming events and announced that there will be no Confirmation class this year.

Communion: Elinor made a few suggestions regarding the procedure for serving communion. She will speak with John and Elsa .

Multi Media Use: Richard reported that the Saco UCC has been very helpful. They network with other churches. It was suggested that Richard write an article for the Beacon to assess the congregation’s interest in having a multi media worship option.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m.

The next meeting will be on February 5th at 7:00 p.m.
Sandy will take the minutes and Elinor will begin with a prayer.


Submitted by: Debbie Riley