The Annual Meeting of the Congregation will take place on Sunday, January 31, during Sunday morning worship. Worship and the business agenda will begin at 10 am. Anyone is welcome to attend; according to the congregation's governing documents, voting is reserved for Covenant Partners of the congregation. For access to meeting materials, including agenda, budget, and ministry goals, visit mcfarlanducc.org/reports. A limited number of printed copies are available at the church.
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The Annual Meeting of the Congregation will take place on Sunday, February 1, beginning at 10 am. We have wrapped a celebration of our 2014 ministry and several business items into an extended worship service. Anyone is welcome to attend; only members of the congregation may vote on the business items. A limited number of printed Annual Reports has been produced. These are available at the church. An electronic copy is available for download here: 
In the interest of environmental and fiscal stewardship, we invite you to view the annual report on your electronic device if that is an option for you, and print out only the pages which you'd like available for quick reference at the meeting.
Major business items are:
More information on all of these is available within the report. A bulletin board by the church kitchen also displays background information presented at a variety of conversations hosted by church leadership in December and January. One of the joys of being a church in the congregational tradition is that we are responsible for governance and the direction of the church. When we exercise this responsibility in combination with prayerful discernment and an eye for what God is doing among us, we are at our most faithful. Please join us on February 1st for an annual meeting that is truly a celebration of where we have come from, and a hope-filled consideration of where we are going together. Families coming to worship with their little ones can expect a new face in the nursery. Miss Peggy has left her position as our nursery attendant in order to be able to worship with her family. We're excited to see her in the sanctuary...which meant we needed to hire a new staff member. McFarland UCC welcomes Emily Veselsky as our new nursery attendant. Here's an introduction, in her own words:
We are confident that - together with our regular nursery volunteers - Emily will continue to provide a consistent, caring, skilled presence in the nursery so those needing nursery services can worship with ease!
Our Annual Meeting/Celebration Sunday will be on February 1st. This is a Sunday in which we’ll take the time to review how far we’ve come as a group of disciples and start to embark into 2015.
I have four highlights to share with you so you have an awareness of what is happening behind-the-scenes, and what we’ll be voting on in February: Our Servant Leadership Team (SaLT) has recruited a small workgroup (Carolyn Bell, Tom Ludwig, and Joan Jacobsen) to support the planning of a sabbatical for Pastor Kerri. According to the terms of call, she is eligible for a sabbatical after five years of ministry with us. We will reach that point in late 2015.
The Sabbatical Planning Team has met twice and invites you to attend one of their information sessions to hear about some initial information regarding Pastor Kerri’s sabbatical. The first information session will be held after worship on Sunday, December 14. The second session is scheduled for Friday, January 2 at 10 am. If you are unable to attend either session and have questions about the activities of this group, please do not hesitate to contact any member of the Sabbatical Planning Team. This is one in a series of informational sessions about items on the agenda for our upcoming Annual Meeting/Celebration on February 1. Keep watching for more! McFarland UCC is coming up on our 30th anniversary in this building next year. Over the past several months, we have welcomed many new faces to our growing community of faith...which is also cause to celebrate! To accommodate our growth and to prepare for upcoming events, the leadership team has been discussing some ways to keep our church space both inviting and functional.
Over the course of the next few weeks, you may notice some changes in how we have our fellowship space arranged as we experiment with a few ideas. Don't worry about rearranging things back to their "usual" position - these changes are being made on purpose! The first thing you may notice this week is the arrangement for serving coffee and treats after worship. Rather than everyone squeezing into the small kitchen window, we'll do prep in the kitchen, and bring the food and drink out into the room to ease congestion and to promote a more intimate feel for our social time together. If you're working in the kitchen, please use the carafes in the cabinets to set coffee out on the serving table rather than serving from the glass ones at the kitchen window. Gregg Krattiger, Rick Duchrow, and Julie Woodward are working on this project. Please let us know your thoughts. If you can't catch one of us (or don't know us yet), we'll have a notepad out so you can comment on what works well and what might help it work better.  We want to make it easy for you to get involved in your church's mission and ministry! McFarland UCC has chosen to begin using SignUpGenius to manage ongoing and one-time ministry opportunities.
If you always mean to sign up for an activity, but forget to check our Mission & Service bulletin board before leaving the building, you can now handle it from home. Using this tool, you'll receive an automatic reminder a few days before the activity takes place. You can also swap timeslots with others so our master list is accurate. SignUp Genius is safe, secure, and your email address will NOT be sold. If you prefer to sign up on paper, you can still stop by the Mission & Service bulletin board when you're in the church building. Opportunities are also posted there on a regular basis. If SignUp Genius is an option for you, though, we encourage you to check it out. Currently listed on our SignUpGenius page: Sunday Morning Ministries, Messy Church Team, and McFarland Family Festival volunteers. In assessing our church's staffing needs, McFarland UCC's Servant Leadership Team (known as SaLT) made the decision this spring to switch from having a part-time Office Assistant to a Communications Coordinator. Mike Klawitter was hired for 8 hours a week beginning this summer. He is responsible for writing news releases, generating local media coverage on church events, and keeping church members informed of activities through emails, our website and blog. Mike is in generally in the office Wednesday afternoons. Be aware that with his limited hours, emails at other times might have a lag time in response.
Are you involved in one of our ministry teams - perhaps planning a church event? Read more about how to use this new resource effectively. At our annual meeting on January 19, 2014, we approved a number of changes to our governing documents (Constitution, Bylaws, and Endowment overview). The substance of these changes has to do with how we organize ourselves for ministry. Maybe you'd like a refresher on what you heard at Annual Meeting. Maybe you're curious about how our church "works." Maybe you're just a church geek. Maybe you'd like to get involved in our ministry. Maybe you're all of those things! Click through for an overview:
Leadership Teams: SaLT and Light! Ministry Triads: How ministry happens Examples of how this ministry model works |
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