"Social Ministry Website Meeting" 10/14/09
Present: Charlie Vasey, Craig Cornelius, Linda Hendrickson, Bob Northcott, Norm Olson, and Gretchen Rauch, with both Joanie Caroon & Betsy Macken as "virtual attendees" by speaker-phone.
Gretchen explained the organization of the website. This included accessing background information on service partners, present Grace involvement, searching on keywords, the left side type font SIZE of these keywords as an indicator of the service interest of our service partners ("hunger" being by far the most important keyword being shared), the process of posting itself, and the seasonal nature of our present categories of service.
Norm stressed the importance of reconstituting the "membership" of the committee to include additional representatives of the congregation, especially more "part time" member-attendees. He hopes to "open up" the committee and its functions and not depend solely on those few who are faithful attendees of face-to-face meetings. This should bring new ideas and new energy to our ministry and provide more consistent and functional representation from the congregation. Using the website for information exchange, discussion, and publicity, and using phone &/or computer communications, as in "virtual meetings," may help to get more Grace members involved in only occasional social ministry participation. Also, there was some consensus last spring that we could reduce the number of general committee meetings, perhaps even quarterly, especially if more people would attend when these were scheduled and more information were shared and discussed before such meetings. Craig mentioned that information and discussion can still be by the usual emailing between interested parties and groups, especially as we are just starting this website communication venture, with the usual start-up problems. We need to be continually aware of this website's appearance to first-time visitors to gracepa.org/socialministry, as well as to all of gracepa.org visitors, even if it quickly becomes functional and helpful to our long time social ministry people and others who begin accessing it repeatedly.
Concerns mentioned this evening were several. More options for open "leadership or "committee-meeting-type" dialog are needed on the website, as pointed out by Linda, and many people certainly still want to commit to some regular face-to-face meetings. Charlie mentioned the need to set timetables, for committee functions and responsibilities, especially when we are doing more virtual meetings. Craig, Charlie, Gretchen, and others, all stated their support for the idea of adopting and posting, "Action Items," in our deliberations and meetings of whatever kind.
There is some legitimate concern about posting personal information, such as names, phone numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. Inappropriate postings can be held back, according to Gretchen, who described a "Bozo" software technique to fend these off. We cannot easily accommodate posts from total strangers or maybe even from non-Grace members at this time (though they will certainly be contacted), at least without establishing some basic rules. Most of the presently posted personal information is either already online or, as in the Dar al-Kalima posting, only a temporary post to show the marked (and inspiring) activity and hard work of that planning group.
ACTION ITEMS (In management, an action item is a documented event, task, activity, or action that needs to take place. Action items are discrete units that can be handled by a single person)
1. Gretchen will add an "Other" to each of the 4 church seasonal groupings, for participants to introduce additional causes, needs, subjects, or even prospective partners [I already see this was accomplished in next 24 hours!-NDO]. Additionally, a posting spot is also needed in the "Administrative" section," the best place for discussion of committee business and and posting comments on website development itself, dialog of the sort pointed out as missing, by Linda.
2. Norm will explore website refinements with Craig, as per his offer, in the next few days. This will include reformatting of the website administrative section to get more legible data on past Mission Investment Fund and Partner Benevolence disbursements for all to evaluate and comment on over the next 6 weeks (=by 11/25)
3. Gary (per action comment in 6/2/09 meeting minutes) or Norm, in Gary's absence, will contact Harvey Blomberg, Sierra Pacific Synod office, within 7 days (by 10/21) to get feedback on our past support of Community (bilingual) Lutheran Church in Watsonville and/or possible alternative recipients of Mission Investment Fund support.
4. Social Ministry Committee eventually needs a chair. However, social ministry activity itself will continue at a stepped-up pace and involve more people and new ideas. Norm agrees to provide that kind of leadership only through the the end of the year and hopes that choosing a new leader, in the interim, could be done in the setting of much wider participation, including more potential candidate leaders, before 12/31/09. Talk it up! This can't really be a "one-person" action idem!
The meeting began at 7:35 pm, little late (phone & logon problems) & took just under an hour.
Norm Olson
This "record" is only a "guide" for further reference/discussion in the next month or so, and it is certainly open to comment/correction/addition/clarification/other offerings, by any of the meeting attendees listed above. It is offered and posted, to stand as written, along with any equally posted qualifications, offered in the same place and near the same date. Maybe the most import part is the forward-looking, "ACTION ITEMS," above. I'm trying to do away with any unnecessary formality, all Robert's Rules of order (though these latter ARE constitutionally mandated for congregational meetings, they are NOT for the council's committees), and needless archiving that is not revisited. We are all friends in the Lord, and the church council and appointed committees, as a whole, has almost no archives (Surprisingly, for years on end, there are almost no minutes archived for Grace council meetings, or for its committees). Other than formally recording our financial allocations and passing them on to the Finance Committee and Council, my feeling is that we waste time and patience with writing of formal "minutes." Just the website postings, including this one, would and should be record enough (or better!) and also won't get lost. Likewise, the annual reports should ideally be posted for all to see, for comment, before being submitted to council, and it too, could and should be corrected/changed for content and submitted by group consensus -NDO