Officer Retreat

Today I had my second officer retreat, with the service board of the congregation. This was a shorter day, but just as productive. This group has never had a statement of purpose or a clear job description. Today we looked at the history, acknowledged the problems, developed a purpose, reorganized the board, and set priorities and goals for the year.

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Daughter was cooperative, helping me set up, going for a walk with a friend, joining us for lunch, and entertaining herself the rest of the time. She managed to do a decent job shoveling the snow. We're getting yet more snow this evening. At the meeting, we were discussing who should go visit our snowbirds.

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One of the things that surprised me was that they acknowledged that there are cliques within the church and that it can be a challenge to feel at home and accepted for newcomers. The top priority they set was doing a better job of welcoming visitors and incorporating new members into the church. I was impressed.

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We're also going to track attendance, divide the members into groups by zones, have a program this fall for individuals caring for aging parents (we have a medical social worker who is retiring soon, so we're going to ask her to help lead it), and plan some fellowship events for the summer. We're going to recruit people to do visitation, and train them in May. We're going to change the way we're doing the coffee hour. The group was relieved to finally have a clearly defined purpose and a plan to carry it out. I'm grateful for the time and effort these individuals are willing to put into doing Christ's work in our church and community. Oh-- they saw one of their roles as supporting the pastor to prevent/delay/minimize burnout. We had quite a discussion as to whether burnout could actually be prevented, which is when the idea of delaying/minimizing came up.

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All in all, the work we accomplished was worth giving up a Saturday. I don't have any more church commitments on Saturday for a month, when I have a wedding. I'd like to keep the Saturday commitments to no more than one a month. I think that will be manageable.