UUCC

Board of Trustees Called Meeting

May 12, 2015

Attendance:  Regina Moody, Marc Drews, Patty Drews, Sandy Chubon, Bob Whitaker, Richard Culler, Caroline Eastman, Gareth Fenley, Janet Swigler, Tim VanDenBerg, Dot Brown, Connie Goodbread.

Guest Presentation

Connie Goodbread, Congregational Life Staff member from the Southeastern Region of UUA, met with the board to talk about the search process for an Interim Minister.  Confidentiality is important early in the process because some ministerial candidates have not informed their congregations that they are seeking another position.  But it should not become creepy secretiveness.  The Interim Task Force can keep the congregation informed about where they are in the process and what the process is.  If a candidate accepts our offer on Friday, we can announce that on Friday.  Names of “rejected” candidates should be kept confidential.  The number of congregations seeking interim ministers outnumber the available interims.

We need to create a contract with the candidate.  We need to create a transition team as soon as possible so the Interim Minister can hit the ground running.

Connie advised that we not rush into a search for a settled minister.  If we do it too soon, we will be trying to find another Neal.  We need to recognize and resolve our feelings about his leaving.  We need to look hard at our congregation, our history, our recent progress, and determine what we really want or need in a minister before we begin a search.  Interim ministers are specifically trained to facilitate these processes in congregations.  We also need to consider what the community around us needs that we can provide.

Questions were raised about leadership development.  Connie said people need to move around in leadership, not hold the same position for decades.  Churches tend to use the “wheedle and beg” method of recruiting leaders; we tell them a committee or office is easy, it only meets once a month, etc.  A better approach is to ask the person what we can do to help him/her grow.  We need to have feedback from members who have been to the Mountain, let them share what they learned there about leadership.  The UUA regional office can help us with leadership development.  When they come to a church in SC to present a program on leadership, they invite people from all the congregations in SC to attend.  We should take advantage of those offerings.

We could take our multiple committees and group them by function.  We could perhaps get our functions down to four, requiring fewer committee chairs.  Every congregation should have a strategic plan that sets times to accomplish given tasks.

A question was raised about how to provide for the ombudsman role of the Shared Ministry Committee since it is suspended during the interim ministry.  Connie said some churches have a “Right Relations Team”, an appointed team to deal with those issues during the interim.

Connie said for every 100 people, a church should have one professional and one support staff.

Connie is conducting an exit interview with Neal and she would like to have an exit interview with the board via skype in June.

Business Meeting

Regina called the meeting to order.

Marc is going to Italy from Friday, May 15, until June 1.  Marc Moved that, in the event that we must go into a second round of searching for an interim minister, Gareth Fenley and Tim VanDenBerg be added to the Interim Task Force.  The motion passed.   Tim was invited to help develop the contract with the interim minister if we are successful in this round.

Marc presented Candidates A and B for the Board’s approval.  A is the Interim Task Force’s first choice.  B is their second choice and will be invited if A rejects our offer.  Both Candidates A and B were approved unanimously by the Board.

There was some discussion about the budget for the coming year and whether there will be sufficient funds available to meet all the re-location costs for the interim minister.

The meeting was adjourned.

Minutes recorded by

Sandy Chubon, Secretary