Ministry Teams Meeting Minutes: 10 April 2013 Ministry Team: Children’s Formation Members Present: Chris Chiavacci, Becky Showalter, Megan Douglas, Judy Garces Vestry Liaison: Judy Garces Agenda Items Discussed:

• Holy Week went well. Palm Sunday was well attended. Maundy Thursday kid’s service small but good. Easter

Egg Hunt was moved inside but Sarah Gordon and Jane Oldham handled it fine.

• Judy Garces will clean toys from the nursery this week.

• Nina will cover childcare during Stop Hunger Now on April 28.

• Youth Sunday – Christie and Chris are working together on song/props for preschool-3rd

graders to use during the

service.

• Pictures of the kids for the hallway wall or doors. Aiden Special has volunteered to do that. He’s started taking

pics – will work to get them up.

• Sunday School End of Year cookout, June 2nd

. Baileywick Park. We have reserved the shelter from 10:30 to

2:30. Church will provide hamburgers and hotdogs, while everyone else brings sides and desserts. Need

coordinators.

• Vacation Bible School – Catherine Shearin, Kellam Gaddy and Becky Showalter organizing. Michelle McElrath

can help in July. July 19-21.

• Think it is time to purchase the online subscription to Spark Online so that we can begin getting comfortable with it

and possibly use it for Summer Sunday School. ($300)

• Need a coordinator for Summer Sunday School. Last year, Laura Cashion did a great job – will ask her again.

• Time to start recruiting teachers again.

Action Items Assigned/Tracked: Action Item Assigned To Due Date

Clean the nursery toys Judy 4/30

Ask for coordinator for End of Year Picnic Becky 4/30

Taking pictures of SS children Aiden S.

GT article – VBS, Youth Sunday, End of Year Picnic, SS Teachers Becky 4/24

Schedule VBS coordinator meeting and initial volunteer meeting Becky/Catherine /Kellam

4/20

Order Spark Online Becky 4/30

Check to see if Laura Cashion would coordinate Summer Sunday School again

Becky 4/20

Ministry Team: Outreach Members Present: Carl Sigel, Pete Crow, Jane Heyward, Pat Watson Vestry Liaison: Annette Hughes Agenda Items Discussed:

• Some discussion of how coupon clipping relates to outreach and hunger theme; focus and beneficiary is IFFS

• Stop Hunger Now event—see action items

• Carl: Friday, May 10, movie night hosted at COTN with potluck supper; Leslie Troan will help with logistics

• Brief discussion of next major event—we want a fiesta inclusive of Hispanics and mindful of

immigration/farmworker issues currently under discussion within the diocese—see action item

Action Items Assigned/Tracked: Action Items Assigned To Due Date

Promo: bulletins and email, Stephanie, poss. posters Jane Now+ Sign-up sheet or email Pat Pat 14, 21 Apr

Link w Stop Hunger Pete Now+ Food and setup Renee/Annette/Judy 28 Apr Nursery Invite Patty to May meeting

Judy Pete

28 Apr soon

Ministry Team: Youth Members Present: Beth Crow, Jane Weinberger , Michael Belmares, John Showalter and Summerlee Walter Vestry Liaison: Fran Kenney Agenda Items Discussed:

• Background Checks

• Youth Budget

• Update on Paid Youth Minister

• Youth Volunteer List

• Youth Calendar and the parish website

• Fundraising for youth events

• Parent Meeting

• Youth Volunteer Training

• Christian Formation Retreat

• Review ongoing projects:

o Attendance record keeping

o Youth Ministry Major Event Binder

o Youth Group

o Core Values List

Action Items Assigned/Tracked: Action Item Assigned To Due Date

Meet with Stewardship Committee about Youth Minister Decide on date for Christian Formation Retreat

Who will be invited to be a part of this retreat

Complete 2013-2014 Youth Calendar Jane W. ?

Ministry Team: Pastoral Care Members Present; Tammy Jenkins, Randy Smith, David Lynch, Babs Freeman from Communications Team, Susie Holmes Vestry Liaison: Susie Holmes

• We reviewed the known pastoral care needs. Tammy Jenkins is the current pastoral care captain and will follow up with specific concerns with Stephanie.

• Babs Freeman visited from the Communications team to discuss confidentiality and privacy policies. The Pastoral

Care team always holds discussions in strictest privacy. Stephanie, the current pastoral care monthly captain and the team leader Janet Alford are usually the only people involved in each month’s activities. Susie sent a confidentiality agreement to Babs as a suggestion as to the importance of confidentiality, and the team agreed that a short reminder of the importance of privacy would be beneficial to everyone.

• Randy Smith reported on the progress in the memorial garden. He will continue his work in forming a committee

to work on the garden. The committee will include someone with a personal connection to the garden as well as representatives from Buildings and Grounds and Pastoral Care. The committee will define the policy guidelines for the garden and raise awareness about it.

• Susie will write an article for Glad Tidings to highlight the availability of the Pastoral Care captain to help in certain

times (death in the family, birth, hospitalization, illness). Parishioners can call the office and Jennie will contact the

month’s captain and Stephanie.

Action Items Person Responsible Date Glad Tidings article Susie Holmes April 30 Current PC Captain Tammy Jenkins April Next PC Captain Fran Kenney May Memorial Garden committee formation Randy Smith June

Ministry Team: Communications Members Present: Gail Christensen, Ben Huckaby, Sarah Bernart, Emilie Siegel, Becky Christian Vestry Liaison: Babs Freeman

Agenda/Items Discussed: • Episcopal Street Sign Placement

o We need to get a new Episcopal street sign, and we need to determine where exactly to put it.

o The leading suggestion is to put the sign at the corner of Ray and Strickland, on the corner where the

closed-down daycare is.

o What permissions, if any, do we need to get from the DOT to do this?

o If it is on private property, who do we need to contact to place the sign on that property?

o Option B - right across the way from our driveway on the Food Lion lot

• Website Concerns

o Media Gallery - how do we easily view images?

o Best bet is to mouse over the image, click on the magnifying glass, and then the images show up

as a sort of slideshow

o Finding files to upload to a page

o Contact Us page - is using the Captcha too much? It is difficult for some people to use and may be

causing frustration, but it is also an excellent defense against spam mail.

o Privacy and Confidentiality

o How much privacy protection do we need? Right now there are no phone numbers and no

emails.

o Concern is that we could/do have the full names of children in something like the liturgical

schedules. How can we get around having this issue?

� One solution: we can set up private directories in our webspace that require a password

to access. When people sign up to lay read/acolyte/whatnot they get the link to this

private directory and the password to access it, but this link is not posted anywhere on

the website.

� We can do this for multiple forms or whatever else, there really isn’t much of a limit.

Links would look something like:nativityonline.org/liturgical_calendars/

o Another option we could try is to create a password-protected page (or set of pages) on the

existing website and have the confidential files placed there. This may or may not be the best

decision and will require some testing as well before we decide which path to choose.

o Linking to Media

o In monthly emails to members the current practice is to link to the home page and then give

directions for how to find content (such as a photo gallery, a Glad Tidings PDF, etc.). This is

really inconvenient--can we just link straight to the file or gallery page?

� Yes. You can link directly to a PDF and you can link directly to the gallery pages. For

example, 2013’s Easter Egg Hunt gallery can be directly linked to as

http://nativityonline.org/gallery-category/easter-egg-hunt-2013/

� An example link for a PDF: http://nativityonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/GT-

2013-04-April.pdf

� These links should be safe for places like Facebook

o Social Media

� We have a follower on Twitter that is a member of the church and tweets quotes from

Stephanie’s sermons, Bible snippets, etc. during the service.

• Can we do anything with this? Maybe re-tweet the best of them with the official

CotN Twitter?

•

•

• Advertising

o Paying for advertising is not a great idea right now--the return on investment is just too low and it doesn’t

make sense.

o What we can do is Public Relations, or essentially any publicity that is free.

• Roadside Banners

o In addition to the Spirituality in the Arts banners and the Christmas and Easter banners, we agreed to

create and erect banners about such events as Vacation Bible School, Pancake Supper, Parish Picnic,

Ghoulish Gala, Outreach Fiesta, Sunday School startup, and Faith and Science Dialog-like discussions in

the future (new Environmental Stewardship grant). These remind parishioners about events, but also tell

passers-by that we are an active church.

• Graphics Guidelines

o Stuck in a place where we need to make templates for things like flyers, presentations, etc.

o Ben & Jason can make these, we just need to kick the project off

o Review Becky’s document to start developing specifications (Ben has printed copy)

o Figure out how many templates and of what media we want to produce, what options there are

o Figure out how these are developed and what software is needed to use these templates

o Develop a first pass at a plan of action (Ben & Jason)

Action Items Discussed/Tracked:

Action Item Assigned To Due Date

Ben and Jason meet about Design Guidelines and production of media/templates Ben and Jason 4/30/13

Gail will look into placement of Episcopal street sign Gail 5/8/13

Ministry Team: Worship Members present: Carol Smith, Waltye Rasulala, Daniel Laird Vestry Liaison: Fran Kenney Agenda/Items Discussed:

• What is our next step? o Develop questions for a "survey monkey" process on line for congregational input: re:

� Additional Services � Weekday - What day � Alternative - What kind � Special Needs - What will be needed � Music � Should the question of additional services be tied to the parking lot discussion?