Last night the leadership team met at my home for 2 1/2 hours. This was our second meeting this month. Our gameplan is to conduct a business meeting at the beginning of every month. We then plan a second meeting with a bit more flexibility built into it. Some months, like in July, the second meeting is strictly social. In July we met at Steve's place and enjoyed a cook-out with our spouses.
This month I picked up an apple pie from Dutch Heritage and served it up with some vanilla ice cream. I gave the team members the option of taking care of some business or of just enjoying the evening. Last night most were in a business mode.
Our treasurer, Shaun, brought us up to speed on our finances - which are really tight this summer. Summer giving, not surprisingly, is down. But our expenses are also up as we have made the location change from Mid-Ohio over to Ontario Christian Fellowship. While our monthly rental costs will decline by a third, we needed to make some investments in lighting and platforms and communion tables to make the new facility more Church Requel-like.
We also reviewed our music leadership team code of conduct and did some wordsmithing. One of the best lines of the evening was from our youngest leadership team member, who said: "We shouldn't expect anything of our worship team that we wouldn't expect from ourselves as a leadership team. So where's our own code of conduct policy?" Great attitude, isn't it? I'm sure that in the not-too-distant-future we'll be writing up our own expectations for ourselves.
Part of my own leadership of this team is to provide these leadership team members exposure to other leaders and leadership concepts. So after 90 minutes of business discussion I served up the pie and ice cream and turned on a DVD video of Chuck Swindoll teaching the 10 things he's learned about leadership after 50 years of ministry. It was a great encouragement to all of us.
After a few minutes of talking about the video, we turned our minds and hearts to prayer. We prayed for the church and for several members of our church going through their own tough times. And we were thankful for the way God has blessed us. I was reminded that we are double the size we were one year ago. We're in a new location, one better suited for us and for our congregation. And we are finding our nitch within Christ's larger kingdom plans in Mansfield.
By 9:30 everyone said their goodbyes. I thought to myself as I walked back into the house how fortunate I am to have this team. One of Church Swindoll's "10 things he's learned in 50 years" includes the advice to not go through ministry alone. So far, Church Requel has definitely been a together kind of experience.
