United Church of God, an International Association

Council of Elders Meeting Report

May 21, 2008—Mason, Ohio

Following the annual General Conference of Elders meetings, the Council members and the U.S. regional pastors met on May 20 for an all-day workshop on meeting facilitation with Michael Wilkinson of Leadership Strategies.

In today’s regularly scheduled Council meeting, Paul Kieffer, Darris McNeely and Robin Webber were in attendance, having been recently selected by the GCE to serve on the Council beginning July 1, 2008.

Since the GCE chose to rescind the 2007 home office relocation ballot, Robert Dick led a discussion on where the Council proceeds from here. In other business, Clyde Kilough presented the president’s report, and Mr. Dick offered background information on strategic planning. The Elder’s Forum status, a review of the recent GCE meeting and items brought forward by the Roles and Rules Committee were also topics of discussion.

“Where Do We Go From Here?”

Mr. Dick raised two issues as a result of the passage of the resolution to rescind. A number of elders had asked if an announcement could be crafted by the Council that could be read in all congregations this Sabbath, May 24. Secondly, now that the ballot to rescind has passed, where does the Council proceed from here? In proceeding with this discussion, Mr. Dick asked the sponsors, since they had crafted the resolution, to present their views and ideas as to where one could proceed from here.

Roy Holladay responded that in the short term, a positive communication sent to the Church by the Council would be helpful. In the long term, he suggested that a task force be formed to see how to progress forward. He stated that he had been determined to accept the ballot decision and move to Texas if that had been the decision this year, and he also emphasized the need for unity and harmony.

Victor Kubik stated that it is important we continue to look to the future in the development of the ministry, etc., and that effort shouldn’t be impeded. We support the three areas of the Strategic Plan. It is very important to bring healing and unity, which will take work. Any new study, though, should consider us staying in Cincinnati. He further asked if Mr. Kilough’s comment at the GCE about what we will look back on next year could be sent in a letter to the GCE. That statement should be a goal for us.

Bill Eddington proposed that we should go back to where we were at the beginning of the proposal to relocate. The three areas of training the ministry, continuing to preach the gospel and developing unity are important. Since there is uncertainty as to what we do, let’s go back to where we were 12 months ago. Let’s go back and rethink it, and whatever we do, strive to bring everyone on board. That is critical.

Bob Berendt said we need to address the healing that needs to take place. We need to address that issue and focus on the things that bind us together. He suggested a very well crafted letter be sent to the GCE and even possibly include a survey. He also stated that we could very well end up moving to Texas in the future.

Mr. Kilough responded that there is no need to rush. He offered a second option; instead of appointing a task force, give the administration a chance to “go back to the table,” develop a plan on how to proceed and provide proposals at the August meetings. Since the resolution to rescind was approved, the logical next step is to develop proposals for how to move forward from here. We have no need to decide today because this is not driven by budget or time constraints.

After the discussion, the Council members agreed that an announcement coming from the Council be read this coming Sabbath, so Mr. Dick asked the Council to craft an announcement for review in tomorrow’s meeting. The Council also asked the president to bring forth a resolution tomorrow as to how he will proceed from this point.

The President’s Report

The Council meeting following the GCE meeting traditionally has an abbreviated report from the president, since much of the material is presented to the GCE, but Mr. Kilough did provide the Council with some additional information.           

ABC starts in September with a nine-month program, which may mean a drop in attendance this year due to the transition to a September start for the next academic term. Clint Porter is preparing a video about ABC that will be sent to all the congregations. It is hoped that the video will stir more people to consider attending ABC.

There will be general Bible studies and 11 to 13 different seminars in seven of the U.S. Feast sites this year. The preteens will also receive newly revised Festival brochures.

The proposed ministerial training program has now been put together, and it was presented for Council review. It includes both short- and long-term plans for training.

To this date, the “Breaking Free” Web site has had 26,000 page views. There have been more than 4,600 first-time visitors, and the average time a person spends on that site is about 15 minutes. The most popular articles accessed are about losing weight and stories of those who are overcoming alcoholism.

Mr. Kilough offered an interesting example of the power of the Internet in preaching the gospel. Aaron Booth, Internet managing editor, found software that allows the audio of a video clip to be transcribed into English, which then scrolls along with the video. The English version of the transcription can then be translated into scores of other languages. This illustrates one possibility among many of how the Internet can be used by international areas to further the gospel.

Treasurer Jason Lovelady then presented two recommendations to the Council. One, we should expand our annual budget reporting to the Council and administration to include monthly budget reports. Second, once we are able to implement monthly budgeting, we should then be able to project what our available cash balances and reserves will be each month in the year ahead. The Council was in favor of both these ideas, and so a more formal presentation of this proposal will be put forth in August.

Mr. Kilough also discussed the recently held meetings relating to Human Resources. One of the strategies in the Strategic Plan was to develop a comprehensive human resource program. In that regard, the firm of McNeely and McNeely has been engaged to help the administration in this endeavor. Dee Kilough, who has much experience in these matters, has been hired by McNeely and McNeely to assist in this process.

Mr. Kilough mentioned as well that June 30 is the target date for the administration to come up with action plans that will be added to the strategies.

The Background of the Strategic Plan

Mr. Dick took time in the meeting to bring the new Council members up to date on the next step in the strategic planning process. The focus will be on monitoring now that the plan is ratified. The Council left the strategic planning retreats knowing that monitoring was critical if the plan was to be a working tool. As a result it contracted with the facilitator to return after three and six months to oversee the quarterly review process.

Mr. Dick went on to mention that the key objectives came about through a three-stage exercise. In the first exercise the Council and administration were to identify as many objectives as possible. In the brainstorming session the Council identified and posted 91 items. The Council was then asked to divide the 91 into three categories. As they did, the Council was also to reduce the number to seven or less in each category for a possible total of 21.

Michael Wilkinson of Leadership Strategies then gave each Council member two large orange dots and three small blue dots. Each member was to then place orange dots, worth three points apiece, on what he thought were the two most significant issues and blue dots, worth one point apiece, on the next three most important strategies. When the values were tallied, just over a dozen strategies rose to the top in importance. From this pool were taken the strategies in the 2008-2009 Strategic Plan. Since strategic planning is a never-ending process, new strategies will be pulled from the pool of high-priority strategies as current ones are completed.

Elder’s Forum

Mr. Kubik led the Council in a discussion about the status of the proposed Web-based Elder’s Forum. There are some remaining questions about its implementation. It still needs to be field tested and evaluated regarding ease of use and other questions. The “pros” of the new system include the management of posts. The GCE doesn’t want their posts prescreened. However, if a post is inappropriate, it can be removed immediately. The “cons” include difficulty for those with dial-up connections to access the forum.

Our current forum is easy to use and it works everywhere. So, what should we do? There needs to be more field testing with a larger group of General Conference of Elders members. In August, the Council can determine what to do with more clarity.

The Council accepted the continued field testing. There will be a request for field testers and Stuart Segall will provide more information to the GCE.

GCE Meeting Review

Dave Register led the Council in a review of the latest GCE meeting. A survey is being prepared and will be available online next week. The results of the survey will be discussed in the August Council meetings.

Over 420 attended Sabbath services. The conference attendance on Sunday included 77 video and nine audio connections, and four Spanish connections. Those physically attending were 197 men and 146 wives for a total registration of 343. Last year the attendance was 356 total. This year 245 attended the Monday morning plenary session, featuring Mr. Wilkinson.

Mr. Register then fielded recommendations for future GCE meetings. Mr. Salyer stated that not everyone was able to hear the chairman’s closing comments or the closing prayer. Mr. Register responded that there was a logistical problem with the hotel staff not being available to get the room dividers open in time.

Mr. Dick also said that due to the nature of our seminars, people leave at different times during the day on Monday and not everyone stays for the closing comments. Those who do stay till the end of the seminars are usually scattered in the halls and in other rooms, and so it is difficult to bring everyone together for only a few closing comments.

Mr. Kilough emphasized that we need to upgrade the awareness among attendees of the need for conference registration. Showing up without giving prior notice consistently creates extra work and difficulty for the staff who prepare for the meetings. Charles Melear noted that some 57 elders were late in registration, and some came who did not register at all.

In a related issue, the secretary presented the amendment schedule for next year, as mandated by the bylaws. The resolution to send out the schedule to the GCE was approved by 11 members (Richard Thompson was absent due to teaching a class).

The date for next year’s GCE meeting is May 3 and 4, 2009.

Roles and Rules Committee Issues

Bill Eddington led the Council in a discussion of a number of items that fall within the venue of the Roles and Rules Committee.

Two GCE members, Edward Smith and Gerhard Marx, were unanimously reconfirmed by the Council to serve another three-year term on the Amendment Committee.

The Council discussed the need to implement a regular self-evaluation process for itself. Mr. Kilough said that in principle we ask the pastors to do this, so we need to model this self-evaluation ourselves. Mr. Kubik noted that we need to analyze our strengths and weaknesses. This issue of self-evaluation, and how it will take place, was remanded back to the committee and will be discussed at the Council meetings in August.

In a discussion regarding the clarification of the governance role of the Council, Mr. Salyer and Leon Walker stated that the role of the president needs to be established first, then one needs to look at the role of the Council—especially in the international areas.

The Council reviewed the scope and responsibilities document for the Roles and the Rules Committee. Portions of the document were edited. The committee will review the entire document and it will be presented again for Council review and approval.

The Council reviewed the document on the role of the international Council members. Many of the roles and tasks originally envisioned for the international members are no longer applicable and their roles are the same as the others on the Council. The Council recommended that a resolution to rescind this document be brought forward for tomorrow’s meeting.

Finally, there was a proposal for the Council to receive regular reports from each of the international areas. Reports could be presented twice a year that would include congregations, baptisms, elders, subscription information and income statistics.

Mr. Lovelady mentioned that we could develop statistics from these figures in order to present reports detailing the total worldwide impact of United. Mr. Eddington then asked the Council to consider what information could be requested for the reports coming from the international areas.

John Foster

Council Reporter

© 2008 United Church of God, an International Association