2013 September Stewards Minutes

Stewards Meeting
Minutes September 1, 2013

Stewards Present: Marjory Bankson, Peter Bankson (worship leader), Pat Conover, Cynthia Dahlin, Sandra Miller (angel), Trish Nemore (recorder), Brenda Seat, Keith Seat, Margreta Silverstone (angel), Deborah Sokolove (moderator)
Stewards Absent: Ken Burton, Lewise Busch (moved), Dave Lloyd, Jacqie Wallen
Members/Guest Present: June Gable, Judy Lantz, Vince Shepherd, Joanne Nay

Housekeeping: next meeting is October 6. Moderator: Keith Seat; Worship Leader: Sandra Miller; Recorder: Marjory Bankson; Angels: Brenda Seat, Trish Nemore

Care Pack Team report: June reported that CPT (currently June, Jake and Peter) continues to fill 15 bags per month, with 5 targeted for women. June and Peter presented at the Washington Adventist Hospital’s quarterly pastors’ luncheon and spoke to several folks after the presentation, including one pastor who noted that his church offered such supplies but had never used a bag for folks to carry them in. Mark’s Kitchen will hold a fundraiser for CPT on September 24 (this date became known after the Stewards meeting); more information to follow. CPT uses Seekers corporate money to purchase bags and outreach posters but prefers the bag contents to come directly from individuals in Seekers as donations. CPT continues to be interested in “seeding” the program elsewhere; hasn’t had much success yet but will continue looking for opportunities. They’ve worked with Trinity Church, Will Ramsey and Teresa Kaiser’s other church and gotten no feedback from that. But they do not hold themselves out as doing programs for other congregations or groups, only showing them how it’s done and being back-up support if a group wishes that. So they are not necessarily expecting feedback. Jake wants to encourage Seekers to have “face time” with people living on the street: even if you have nothing to give a person, look them in the eye and say hello.

Sunday School Team report: Trish reported for the SS team (Dave, Pat, Brenda, Elizabeth and herself) that recruiting for the new SS year is going well; team is working with the Holmes to present a sexuality curriculum to the older children in the fall; team is beginning to plan a confirmation class for the spring; will talk with Ivan, Allan, David and Damalie about what more the older boys might want from us; will try to get older children to participate in Circle Time and explore having them in worship more often; will ask Samantha, age 16, if she’d prefer to be in worship or in Sunday School. Teachers are seeing more engagement from the older children these days.

Takoma Park Folk Festival: Keith reported that Larry Rawlings is pulling all the pieces together for this year’s Seekers/Carroll Café presence at the festival next Sunday, September 8. Linda Nunes-Schrag is in charge of lemonade. Stewards are urged to fill in holes in the schedule for our presence over the day of the festival. Pat will take Ivan and Allan over in the morning to help set up.

Emmy Lu’s birthday celebration: Marjory reminded us that September 8 is also the day we will fully celebrate Emmy Lu’s 90th birthday, which was August 4.

Proposal for use of offering on September 22: Sandra, on behalf of the Sacred Conversations on Race and Diversity Planning Group (Sandra, Trish, Maybelle Bennett and Kim Jackson) proposed that cash from the September 22 joint worship service be equally divided between Covenant Christian Community and Seekers Church and, in addition, that we provide envelopes for a special offering to support the Thanksgiving Basket Project of which Seekers and Covenant are major planners and contributors. Money from the special offering would be in addition to the amount budgeted by Seekers for the Thanksgiving Basket project. Stewards approved this proposal. The plan for disposition of the offering will be announced at Circle Time each week before September 22 and as the offering is beginning on that date.

Review of Stewards Commitments and Disciplines: As part of Stewards’ preparation for recommitment, Marjory led us in an exercise in which we individually and then in small groups discussed first our greatest challenges with the eight commitments we make as Stewards, then how we observe the first three disciplines (attending Sunday worship; observing daily prayer, reflection, scripture reading; and giving proportionately). We discovered that our biggest challenges, as a group, are with commitments to care for the whole of creation, foster justice, work to end all war and share responsibility for the spiritual growth of all Seekers. We observed that we each bring different strengths to various commitments; we could all do better on all the commitments and we have to live with the dissonance of our inadequacies and know that where we are in the moment is enough. We noted that God uses both our strengths and our weaknesses; are we a gift in our challenges? We noted that part of our function in honoring our commitments is as celebrant: to call out and hold up efforts we see by individuals or groups in the community that move us closer to meeting our commitments.

Soul Talk

Adjournment with prayer.