Council > Council Meeting Minutes > July 11, 2006

MGLC Council Meeting Minutes

July 11, 2006

Council Members Present: Steve Hanson, Todd Treml, Steve Wagner, Shelly Halverson, Jon Brandon, Jim Vaughn, and Laura Winge; Absent: Rick Moulton, Peg Turnquist

Committee Chairs Present: None at this meeting.

Staff Present: Pastor Durk

Steve Hanson opened the meeting sharing from Daily Text for July 11 and prayer.

Approve June Minutes
Motion to approve the minutes from the June 8 meeting made by Jim Vaughn and seconded by Steve Wagner. All approved.

Church Membership Records
Jeanne provided the council a membership listing of people who have not worshipped with us in the last five years. Council needs to vote to remove these members from the rolls. The list was reviewed. Pastor Durk commented that one person had worshipped at Easter time and should be left on the list. Shelly Halverson motioned to remove 117 people immediately. Laura Winge seconded. All approved. Jeanne will provide us with another list in August to vote on a group of people to become inactive. This list will include people who haven’t worshipped with us in the last two years or more.

Pastor Reports
Pastor Durk shared information about Pastor Chris’s activities:

• Dana Turnquist is the leader of the Arts and Environment Team.
• Pastor Chris has been leading worship services at Champlin Shores, Osseo Gardens and Berkshire.
• She is helping to form a Discipleship Committee.
• Each of the pastors is helping to lead the summer Revelations study this summer.
• Doreen Meyer is coordinating a senior women’s fellowship group and Shelly Halverson will continue with a Saturday morning Women’s Fellowship group.
• In the fall, an adult study will be offered Wednesday evenings from 8-9 pm on the Lutheran Handbook and Romans. Pastor Chris will also teach Crossways one time a week this year on Tuesday evenings. She is working with Mary Monge on Caring Ministries and is not here tonight because she is with our youth at the National Youth Gathering in San Antonio, Texas.

Pastor Durk distributed copies of his report and highlighted the following:

• Facility Team – they have a subcommittee working on the sanctuary.  They are working on classrooms, youth room, and kitchen. Kitchen would be plumbed in and ask groups to help with this. If the land is sold, then we could complete the kitchen. Sanctuary is the #1 priority. The team is doing well – they have good communication. By the end of July they should have a schematic plan and want to dig in November. The architect is phenomenal. They are working at phasing in several packages.
• Dick Wehrs, Kairos, will be coming in August to step in and talk about framework and create a plan. We have his services for three years.
• The new organizational structure is leaner and will move more strategically. The new structure will take a year or two to grow into. It will get more people involved in teams. Currently a lot of staff is in leadership – we need to invite people to be involved. Committees will decide how teams should report.
• Staffing – Dean Henke has applied for the position of Office Manager Position. The ad ran three weeks in the Ministry Notes. We didn’t advertise in the Osseo/Maple Grove Press. Shelly was disappointed that we didn’t do what we said we would do. Todd looks at this offer as more of a promotion for that person. We want to retain and reward hard working employees that are here today.
• Pastor Durk was offered a scholarship to participate in a Clergy Coaching session every other week. All Pastors face challenges and these are seasoned pastors who coach and mentor.
• We have three new member families joining our congregation, which is a little smaller class, but we have regular first time visitors each week and have done 40 baptisms so far this year.
• Shelly motioned that we warmly welcome the new members families into membership at MGLC. Jon Brandon seconded – all approved.

Personnel
Todd Treml will chair this committee. Lori Schmidt will join the team and has a human resources background. Shelly motioned to accept Lori joining the Personnel subcommittee, Todd seconded – all approved. Council will approve all members added to finance subcommittee and personnel subcommittee. Personnel are also working on rewriting job descriptions for Ruth Blom and Todd Grover. Dean Henke is interviewing for the Office Manager position on Thursday. Discussion about this being a bonded position and if a background check has already been done on Dean.

Financial Update
Steve Wagner reviewed the Statement of Financial Position. Good news – our mortgage is under 2 million in debt for the first time! Reminder that we budgeted pledges at 100% and were less aggressive on non-pledged. We are on track for June, but a little behind for the year, about 6%. Concern about social concerns and special appeals – we have hardly seen any requests this year. Outreach does have a plan in October and December for special appeals. We are making up a lot of ground in Personnel during this transition time and are +16,000 overall in expenses.

The capital appeal total is currently at $955,000. The Capital Fund ending balance as of June 2006 is $287,000 and there were inflows of $17,000 in June. We pay out almost $15,000 to our mortgage each month. We are currently self-supporting on our debt service.

New Building Financial Parameters

• Chad Thomas and Greg Goeke are meeting tomorrow to get a status update with Collier.
• There was much discussion about how much we can really afford to do.  We originally said 4.6 million. We don’t want to jeopardize things. 
• We are checking with Bremer and Thrivent to see how they can help us. Thrivent would be able to do the construction financing and offers prepayment with no penalty. Bank really needs cost estimates before they put something together. Hopeful that first phase sanctuary would be at 2 to 3 million. 
• The numbers we discussed in March were very conservative – considered zero net cash on the land sale, receive 2 million and pay off the debt, allowing us the start debt free. If we bump up our debt service to $20,000 a month that would allow us to borrow 3 million dollars. Any additional cash on the land sale is gravy and could be dollar for dollar. If we were to approve 4.5 million or over on the project, we would need an assumption on equity on the land we are selling. 
• Discussion about what is the most we can do based on assumptions we know today. If we had a six million debt project that would be $35,000 a month of debt service. 
• All are confident that once we truly break ground there will be more pledging. 
• We have learned that Streeter sold his land for $300,000 an acre. 
• We need to remember that we are also battling interest rates. 
• January 1, 2007 we start paying taxes on the land, currently assessed as non-exempt property: $80,000 per year. 
• A construction loan would be like a line of credit.
• Steve Hanson will speak to Chad Thomas and give direction to the Steering Committee to try to sell the land in the next six months for the best amount possible. We don’t need to hold out for two years for the most money. 
• Architect fees are at 7% of the total cost. 
• We need to be sure that our needs are being met with spending 4.5 for the total of phase one.
• Steve W. offered the following examples for consideration, based on no net cash at 7½ :
  
  

  Monthly Debt Service	Loan Amount
  $15,000 (same as today)	2.3 million
  $20,000	2.8 million
  $25,000	3.3 million

• Council would like Rick Moulton, Council Vice President and on Finance Committee, to sit in on facility meetings. We want to continue to empower Doug (Finance liaison for Facility) and offer him support. 
• Dean will need to provide information to the bank before his trip on 7/18. 
• Next steps to include Steve Wagner talking to Doug Cassady – what if bank says 3 million – what do we get?  We need to look at all options, so we are ready to go.

A Balcony Perspective book discussion
Todd Treml led us through a discussion of Chapter 1 – highlighting that the council is a reflective body. Staff deals with what happens day in and day out. We take an overview (balcony) perspective. Council doesn’t take leadership tasks – we help leaders with direction, advise and mentor. Council is in the best position to create strategies from a vision: 1 eye on the past, 1 eye on the future. Council should encourage staff to lead. We do need to remind the staff of the character of our congregation – our church has very strong lay leadership. An “out front” Pastor doesn’t work here – the Pastor leads with no followers. Read Chapter 2 for the next council meeting.

New Business
Discussed e-mail voting and determined that this is different than proxy voting. It was decided that e-mail voting would be discouraged and used only as needed as determined by the President of the Council. 

Training session for committees and ministry teams are going well. An At-A-Glance chart of the committees, committee chair, the staff liaisons and the ministry teams that report to each area will be provided in the July Messenger issue. Shelly will submit this to Dean Gulstad.

We need to finalize our nominating committee. Steve Hanson will speak to Rick Moulton about contacting the following people: Kathy Bruha, Patty Branch, Erik Scott, Dave Palm, Jennifer Martinson and Paul Backer to fill our two outgoing council member roles.

Meeting closed with the Lord’s Prayer.

Respectfully submitted,
Shelly Halverson, Secretary

Next Council/Committee Chair Meeting: Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 7:00 pm at MGLC.
Devotions: Jon Brandon
Committee Chairs to attend: Operations – Sue Hanson and Parish Life – Jen Martinson