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Attendees: Bonnie Bates, Convenor; David Southard, Recorder; Clarence Price, Lawrence Gilley, Peg Mainusch, Melva Victorino, Kay Woike, Bob Welcher and Rick Cowles, Upstate Regional Conference Minister. The Reverend Gary Ferner and Corrine
Pimm attended, in their official capacity as members of the UCCNYConf. Personnel Committee.
Bonnie opened our Meeting at 10:30 AM. She welcomed all and provided a reflection and an opening prayer. David circulated a sign-in sheet and asked everyone for an e-mail address & phone # update.
Minutes from the October meeting were reviewed. (David had posted the minutes to our website). The minutes were accepted, by consensus.
Gary and Corrine were at our meeting, specifically to conduct a “Comprehensive Review” of our Ministry in the larger process of evaluation of the Conference Minister’s staff and ministries. Gary spoke of “believable feedback” and “completing the circle” during his introduction and that he would like to hear “feedback” from everyone. He encouraged “extroverts” to be quiet and “introverts” to reach out (speak up). He assured us that “today’s process is very confidential”. What follows is an overview of the review of our Commission, without attribution. There were six (6) questions posed by the personnel committee.
Question 1: “How do you experience the Holy on our Commission”? Answers included: Taking a risk/ Building relationships/ all are agents of God/ hands of God/ rewarding and helping/ we have far to go-“we all fall short of the glory of God”.
Question 2: “In your work on the Commission, what do you find satisfying and challenging”? Answers included: working with those who care/ planning/ organizing/ controlling/ communicating/ trust/ relationships with our missionaries/ task focus/ time is limited/ compete with myself/ develop friendship bonds.
Question 3: “How do you experience the Commission’s relationships with other church bodies, local and otherwise”? Answers included: awareness providing/ encouraged by messages from UCC Hq/ Oneida Assoc./ Susquehanna Assoc./ remind one another to be more outreaching/ communications/ increase visibility/Negative was: all three Commissions don’t seem to work to keep our churches informed about what’s happening.
Question 4: “How do you experience the volunteer leadership of the commission”? Answer: very helpful & encouraging.
Question 5: “How do you experience the staff support of our commission”?
Answers included: A lot of praise for Rick Cowles as our Conference liaison/ praise for UCC Hq quickness of response and sending resources/ some frustrations in No quick response from some of our “working” staff at the Conference Office/ Conference web site NOT kept up to date/ NYHELP is self supporting & re-energized.
Question 6: “What else would you like to express about your role on this Commission”? No Answer/ no response.
Ginger Comstock provided Bonnie with a written report, since she was unable to attend. Ginger will report on NYHELP at our next meeting.
Bonnie reported, next, on our “Joint Youth Mission Events”. Communications have been difficult. E-mails don’t always get through. Bonnie and Rick have communicated with the Barnes and our “joint” trip may not happen until 2010. Rick would like to accompany the group, but Lawrence (probably) cannot. Rick suggested we consider sending “our” youth to South Africa and not wait for the German contingent. Our youth were again defined as those between ages 18-25.
Between June 2 and 10, 2009, German lay members will visit the USA. Clare has asked a lay group to consider Tuesday arrival, before the Annual Meeting, in June. 14 German visitors will go to NYC and will need hosts and then on to Upstate NY and Silver Bay (to attend NY Conf. Annual Meeting). Clare would like Upstate “hosts” from June 8-10. Call Clare if we can host during that time. The German guests will travel to the UCC NY Conference Office on June 10, 2009.
Mission Trip Guidelines were next on the agenda. Dona Roll and Marge Watrobski, who were not able to attend, provided their report and we spent some time adding to this document, especially from Lawrence’s suggestions. There was general agreement, by those in attendance, that we replace the present “Statement of Purpose” with the one suggested by Lawrence. Lawrence said we should have “lean guidelines” with individual specifics for “each” trip. Bonnie will communicate our suggested changes to Dona and Marge. Per additional discussion, we decided to delete: “Persons involved in NYSOM”, in the Personnel section. Also, change to “Each delegation shall be sensitive for the need to include”. In the Provision section, “Budget for the trip has been prepared and adequate funding with clarification of what the host will provide”. In the Post-Script section, change to “Written Report-and may be highlights” and in the Reflections section, add “the Commission shall report to the host country”.
Lawrence provided Grace for our “working” lunch.
Bob reported on Missionary Partnerships. Bob will follow up on a question about the availability of Phyllis Byrd during her May 31, 2009 itineration. He will determine whether she would be available to us. Marge has been communicating with Mision Cristiana. A Mision Cristiana report will be provided at our next meeting.
It was suggested that these minutes reflect the following statement: We regret that UCC Global Church Ministries has not scheduled any Missionaries so that our Commission will be unable to achieve our NY Conference Missionary visitation goal for 2009.
Next on our agenda was The Disaster Response Team (DiRT) discussion. Clare provided a written report. Clare will contact Amos from the UCC Western Region and provide help and advice (as Disaster Response Trip Coordinator for our Commission) to set up a visits to a disaster area. Kay Woike asked us to provide prayers for the survivors of the recent Buffalo area plane crash. Lawrence commented that for a disaster like that, pastoral care would be more appropriate than volunteer visits to the scene.
Clare’s airline transportation costs were unanimously approved for an upcoming Disaster Conference in Iowa (April 16-19, 2009). Clare said he was informed by our UCC Nat’l Disaster Director, Coppola, that we should take a 3-fold approach to readying ourselves for Disaster preparedness:
1. Identify a Church Representative,
2. Train in how to assess a disaster,
3. Determine what we can do.
It has been difficult to persuade churches in the NY Conference to provide a DiRT rep for their church, but the present team will continue to call the churches. We have had to cancel our March 14 training session in the Albany area. David and Earl Ward will travel to Alabama (March 15-21, 2009) for FEMA training, funded by US Homeland Security.
Mission Possible III was next discussed. We will hold the retreat at the Christ the King Center on March 27 and 28, 2009. After a lengthy discussion, David will act as Registrar, as he did for Mission Possible II and he and Melva and Marge will work on developing a program. Melva has already accomplished a lot and has come up with a name, “Digging Deeper into Mission”. Bruce Van Voorhis has agreed to be our keynote speaker. Bruce is from UCC Common Global Ministries. We will ask Geoffrey Black to conduct a bible study. Melva will get help to develop a colorful poster to advertise MP III. Melva and Bob will work on worship services for the weekend.
Our Commission Budget was next discussed. We agreed to allow Rick to submit our budget for 2010 (January 1-December 31, 2010). Rick showed us a slide show about Global Mission as practiced by UCC NY Conference. (Shown at a Wider Church meeting in November, 2008). The experience was good; gave our conference a good reputation.
Bonnie asked us to review and return suggestions for improvements and revisions of the Mission Survey she handed to us.
Kay closed our meeting with a prayer.
Our next meeting is Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 11 AM, at the NY Conference Office.
Respectfully submitted by Recording Secretary David G. Southard.
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