Vestry Meeting - January 17, 2011

Clerk - Charles+

Present:  Karl, Jim, Jay, Janet, Claudia+, Nancy, Beckie, Charles+, Aimee

November 16 Minutes - Nancy noted the church with whom we are consulting regarding marketing is All Saints, SLC and not Los Angeles.

Minutes were approved by consensus.

Beckie's Report:  Still working on December financials, but not ready.  With respect to pledges, as of tonight we are at 83 pledges totaling $238,434.  We should have at least four more pledges coming in according to the stewardship team's calls. We have nine new pledges.

We lost nine pledging units. There may be additional opportunities if phone calls were made targeting families with children. It would be good to know why they are not pledging.  Many of the 18 names which were removed from our rolls were only marginally connected to the parish community. Phone calls this year are much later compared to last year......Need to finish the calls before mid-December. She will ask Judy to call those for whom a stewardship message was left, but no personal contact. Judy will try to connect and make a personal contact.

Beckie is having trouble with her accounting software and this is delaying her getting her reports done. She probably will not complete the finance report for December 2010 until late January or early December.  Jay noted that in January, we had $46,000 in our checking account. Our best guess about year-end cash on hand is about $21,000. Christmas Eve offering was about $4600 which is not bad given the pessimism about the economy.  Our plate income for the year was $30,000 compared to our budget of $35,000. So far we have received about 88% of pledged income compared to about 92% in previous years.

Cell Tower - Nancy asked about the history. Charles explained that up until now, the Vestry has been uncomfortable about giving up our rights to the tower and the potential income stream for the 40 to 50 years indicated in the offers. Janet recommended we decline the offer as did Mac. We agreed to decline the offer.

Saturday, February 26th - We will meet from 9 to 3 with the Bishop to talk about church growth and development.

Our Vestry Retreat will follow our workshop with the Bishop on Saturday, March 12th 8:30 to 1:00.

Charles explained the work of the Diocesan Congregational Missions Committee......to work with every parish to become financially independent over the next five years. With the reduction in the Diocesan Budget due to the debt payment & the reduction of proceeds from the Perpetual Trust, there may be pressure to move faster than 5 years. Jay recommended we be proactive about this and develop a plan to propose to the Diocese.

Charles - Recommended that we have in-house coffees sometime during 2011 to discuss stewardship principles + our vision + our fiscal realities.  Nancy suggested we have a "Wine, Wishes and Wisdom II" to accomplish this task: how do we fund our vision? Jay suggested we do it in September to gear us up for the pledge drive.

Jay lead a discussion of the 2011 budget - We set a goal of $265,000 in the hope of getting to $250,000. We added $15K to the $250,000 base budget. 

We are at $238,434. What is the minimum operating budget we can get by with? Possible targets for cutting are: $6K advertising, $3K COLA, $3K replenishing our capital reserves, $3600 one professional singer.

After much discussion as we attempted to identify priorities, we decided to wait until all of the pledges are in and then meet again.  We will next meet following the 10:30 worship service on Sunday, January 30th at noon.

At that meeting, we will want to finalize our presentation to the congregation at the Annual Meeting on February 6th.

Blessings,

Charles+

The Rev. Charles Robinson, Rector

    Email:  pastor@stlukespc.org

   Office:  435-649-4900 Ext. 11

       Cell:  435-901-2131

Website:  www.stlukespc.org