The OCC Council met on Wednesday, February 24. Minutes below.

The next meeting of Council will be March 16 at 7:30 pm in the Library.

Council Attendance: Gail Mead, Fred Matteson, Kathleen Wiegand, Dave Hoppock, Bob Winbigler, Kurt Sunderbruch

Clergy Attending: Jim Bergquist, Nate Klug

Moderator Gail Mead opened the meeting with a prayer at 7:40 pm.
Minutes: It was moved to approve the 1/13/16 minutes as sent. Motion was seconded and approved.

Consent Calendar: Have received reports from two of the Ministry Team Leaders (for Children and Youth and Life Long Learning and Spirituality). The team reports will set a baseline for us to work with. We discussed a form for the reports including a quad report and keeping the reports short and simple. We may want to distribute the reports back out to all the Ministry Team Leaders. We’re due for a Ministry Team Leader meeting. Lani wants everyone to know how to apply for funds. We’ll have an all-ministry team leader meeting next month.
Consent calendar explanation: Teams report what they’re doing before the monthly Council meeting. Only exceptions are brought up at Council meetings. Need a format that will be public; need transparency.

Options:

put the Council meeting minutes or a web link to the minutes in The Neighbor;

or put copies in the Narthex.

Moderator’s Report: The Council voted and agreed to go into a closed, executive session to discuss a matter that would violate the privacy of an individual if discussed in an open meeting.

Financial Corner in The Neighbor: We need a section to talk about finances. Kathi and Dixon could do a stewardship update.

Re-envisioning/next steps: How do we update the congregation/new members on where we are, what items we want to do/accomplish? We’re trying to make the church a learning community. How do we tie in what we did with re-envisioning to how to cultivate it? Let’s finish off the execution. We’ve had some focus groups working on parts of re-envisioning. We may have too many priorities—may need to trim some. What are the most important things we could nail? Show progress and movement. Gail is trying to get the ministry teams to think about where they’re going especially in regard to the re-envisioning. How to cultivate this? Jim and Nate are making little changes as we’re working toward these goals. Do ministry teams have charters? Last year they wrote ministry statements. Is this still a consistent view? Should be very aspirational. What do we want these ministries to do? Gail talked with one ministry team, making
some suggestions, and they were excited about the ideas. Some of the ministries need more people. Do we need to meet with the ministries to get them kickstarted? We need to develop better communications with the ministry teams. Some ministries are highly functioning but some need guidance. What are the charges of each ministry team and how do we help them? Some ministry teams, e.g., Mercy and Justice (M&J) , have ambitions that should involve the whole congregation. The Council will brainstorm with each ministry team to support them in their next steps. For M&J, can discuss how we better care for each other, get to know each other. Have M&J create opportunities for members to help members (inreach), as well as opportunities to help others in the community (outreach). We need a Moment for Mission regarding an M&J opportunity. Jim envisions a once-a-month outreach event for M&J.

Council Calendar:
March –all ministry team leaders
April – Mercy &Justice
May –Children &Youth

Orinda Senior Village (OSV) Plans: OSV has been very successful and the board of directors is thinking of building additional senior housing. The envisioned project is affordable housing for the elderly, with independent living, on a mixed income basis, preferably at a location as close to the present facilities as possible. Re-envisioning helped get OCC members on the same wavelength about OSV. We can have forums to make sure people know what’s going on. Success of OSV has helped many see how good it is for the community. Lesson from last time—process needs to be sufficiently transparent. Also, convey the financial benefits. The OSV Board of Directors has
offered to present and take questions at a “town hall” meeting to educate OCC members. Fred will find people to be on an exploratory group that will meet with the OSV Board to hear about the expansion concept.

At-Large Member Reports: Dave indicated a team has started working on the website (Dave, Jim, John Skidgel, and Andy Weber). The team feels we need to have a company host our web site so we can just focus on content and pictures. They have narrowed it down to two companies that provide templates: Clover Sites and Squarespace. The goal is to make a decision on the company by two weeks from
Monday. Either company will work. Then the team will work on content and pictures. To make the decision, the team will consider the photo editors, how well the programs work on mobile phones, and whether or not we want phone support. Dave thinks phone support is good. Calendaring is important. How can we use Facebook better? Can we provide links for members to access Facebook pages or to help drive people to our website? Is our website for members or for the public? Dave asked about improving signage on the front of the church office building. When walking in from the parking lot, especially at night, it’s hard to see the building is part of a church, not a community hall. Bob will mention the issue to the Building and Grounds Committee to see what they recommend.

Other items: Andy Weber is helping with the Agape renewal. Gail asked about having a suggestion box as a vehicle to hear from people. We’ve had one in the past but it’s slowly died out. We could do a Moment for Mission every now and then and ask for suggestions on the Sunday preceding a Council meeting. We could also do this in the Fellowship Hall (make inquiries during the fellowship time after the service).

Senior Minister Report: Lots going on. We have 3-5 people joining the church on Palm Sunday. The service trip to Belize in June has 5 people. Jim appreciates Nate’s work with LL&S and being able to bounce ideas around with Nate. Adult Sunday school is going well. The potluck dinners are going well. The auction generated 12 events from Jan. through the end of March. Which raises the question of how many other events do we want to offer? Where’s the balance of programmatic stuff to just being with people? Jim is looking towards next year’s calendars and how to calendar events for families.

Minister/Artist-in-Residence Report: Nate is really enjoying his time here. Making progress in realizing extent things need to be calendared. He’s realized the congregation doesn’t always know the extent to which people are working with the church, e.g. the writer’s group and how it created the Lenten devotional. OCC offers opportunities for people to benefit spiritually from the church even when not attending services. This is how the church is helping people grow.

New Matters/Actions:
Gail--work on conflict resolution guides
Gail and Kurt--work on a report format for the ministry reports
Fred--convene an exploratory group to work with the OSV Board of Directors
Jim--notify Dagmar to put next Council meeting date/time in The Neighbor
Next Meeting: Wednesday, March 16 at 7:30 pm.

Kathleen Wiegand, Clerk