Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

As summer approaches and throughout the year, one of the major issues that church leaders face is how to find a clergy person to fill in for Sunday services if the priest is unavailable. This issue is more pervasive for congregations in transition but is equally stressful for congregations with full-time clergy when it is time for vacation, sabbatical or the clergy is ill. The stakes are even higher if the need for clergy is on a high Holy Day such as Easter or Christmas. One of the most important activity for anyone with this responsibility is to plan in advance especially with the current clergy avoiding the last minute panic.

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April is financial literacy month and to help your congregation, we offer five resources to help get you started with the basics. Please share this digest with your parish leadership and extend an invitation to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers and the monthly digest.

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How can we meet better? This month we offer five resources to help your vestry or other church group have more engaging and productive meetings. Please share this digest with new members of your vestry and extend an invitation to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices’ to receive Vestry Papers and the monthly digest.

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Lynne Switalski was just coming off a 3-year Vestry term when she was asked to be the Senior Warden at Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in South Bend, Indiana. Nine months into that position, the Rector announced he had accepted a call at another parish. Lynne was propelled into a Rector search process, office cleaning and reorganization, and hiring a secretary. With a smile, she calls this her “trial and error learning phase.” Now, with 6 ½ years of experience, Lynne offers these pointers for new Senior Wardens:

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Coming to church saves lives.
Literally.

At least it did in our congregation on Christmas Eve.

If you read only one blog, read this. If you’re going to follow the advice of only one best-practices column, let it be this one.

It’s a lifesaver.

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In April of 2016, I put out a request for help to the Episcopal Communicators Facebook group on best practices and recommendations for electronic voting at our bishop election convention in Central New York. As a way to say ‘thank you’ to this group, here’s what worked for us. (Click here for the related photos)

A response from Patrick Stroll in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania shared that they had contracted with a local school district to use their electronic voting system. As luck would have it, we had a school administrator on our Bishop Search Committee. Apparently New York has changed many of the laws around school voting, and he thought it unlikely that any school district would take the chance in renting out their electronic voting systems.

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This post is about efficiency, for sure, and it’s about a pretty small, seemingly insignificant part of congregational life, but I’m also a believer that paying attention to the little things – and with an eye toward greater efficiency – is a great way to pastor the whole community.

Here’s the problem we were facing: every week, our parish administrator, together with me and our music director, created drafts of the Sunday bulletin and got them to our inboxes by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. There was one bulletin for 8 o’clock, another for 10:30am. Both had announcements and information, the same calendar and same scriptures, of course. One had music, the other did not. When all the edits came in, bulletins were printed, folded, stapled, and set out for the various worship services.

Sounds like life in most every parish church, I’m sure.

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I have always loved looking through the church directories. As a kid, I would flip through them between commercials or get distracted by the photos whenever I was looking up a phone number. Seeing each picture both as an individual unit (whether family or single) and as part of the larger whole of the church was oddly compelling.

When we received our new church directory on Sunday, I found myself drawn again to the pictures. And I wasn’t the only one. During the coffee hour, several folks were thumbing through it.

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Editor’s note: Years ago, I worked for the Girl Scouts. Each summer one day was dedicated to cleaning the old mansion that housed our offices. Mornings were spent clearing common and storage areas, afternoons, individual offices. For today’s summer rerun, we’re sharing Richelle Thompson’s July 14, 2014 post about a different type of cleaning…

Spring cleaning is a pipe dream for most congregations. It’s too busy, with Easter and end-of-the-year celebrations.

Summers tend to be a little slower and thus a better time for “spring cleaning.” Here’s one place that almost always needs the dust knocked off: the mailing lists. All too often, the mailing lists are a one-way destination; once you’re on the list, you never get off. You may still be receiving the newsletter from the church you visited with a high school chum four decades ago. Like official church rosters, mailing lists are more helpful when they’re (mostly) accurate.

Most congregations have a variety of mailing lists: leadership, acolytes, commission members. There are also the list of people who receive the annual stewardship appeal and those who receive the newsletter and parish Christmas card.

It makes sense to cull through the lists on an annual basis. This isn’t about saving stamps, although you might save a few shekels. It’s really about making sure the messages reach the intended audiences. People move, change positions, switch churches. They divorce. And die.

I’ve received more than one call from a grieving widow, asking to please take her spouse’s name off the mailing list. It’s too painful to receive mail for her beloved deceased.

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Our by-laws stipulate that one of the officers of the vestry is a person called ‘registrar.’ This person records minutes of vestry meetings and makes them available to the group. “[S]hall keep or cause to be kept true and accurate minutes of all meetings. …Copies of vestry minutes shall be made available to each member prior to the next regularly scheduled meeting.” The duties of the registrar as found in our by-laws are just as straightforward: “The registrar shall record the minutes of all vestry meetings and all-parish meetings in a suitable minute book, which shall be maintained in the church office.”

Our parochial report asks us every year to provide the name of the clerk of the vestry, which we assume means our registrar. And our diocese, meanwhile, asks us every year to update our list of parish officers, and specifically they ask us to provide them the name of the secretary of our vestry.

Registrar? Clerk? Secretary?

All of these titles are talking about (roughly) the same job. They’re referring to the person who records and, as needed, revises minutes of vestry meetings and, from time to time, meetings of the parish. I get it, and so do you. I wouldn’t waste your time with a blog post about different names for the same basic job. I promise.

The question I want to leave here for the church is whether we might want to look at enhancing, expanding or making more useful the job of registrar / clerk / secretary?

The fact is that, decades ago, the clerk or secretary or registrar was not only the minute-taker but also the primary record keeper and a true officer of the congregation. The registrar signed cemetery deeds, as, in our case, she still does. The registrar/clerk probably kept and updated the parish register, probably keeping it at his or her own home, recording marriages and baptisms and various other services.

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I've spent quite a bit of time looking for the perfect to-do app – something I can download onto my Smartphone to help me keep track of everything I have to do. I want it to be simple and easy to use, but also to have all the intricate and advanced features I imagine will make me more productive. Occasionally I do find an app that has all the features I want, but then it turns out to be so complicated to decipher and difficult to use that I give up on it. Or, I come across an app that is easy and intuitive, but it lacks those important functions that I imagine I must have. It turns out the perfect “to-do list” app does not exist.

I've worked in a few churches and communities that have spent a lot of time looking for the perfect software to manage their database or help community members stay in touch. Many end up using complicated and difficult-to-use software because it has all the features the leadership thinks it needs. Maybe the software tracks donations and contact information and you can also pay the bills with it, but it's a nightmare to use.

A few weeks ago I was at a meeting where Kyle Oliver, Digital Missioner for the Center of the Ministry of Teaching, talked about the tension many communities feel between finding the perfect platform or application for a community and the fact that no one really wants to learn to use new software, or another login to remember. We sometimes imagine that there are technical solutions to our problems, when really the solution is managing personnel or time, or working on the norms of our community. Because ultimately there is no to-do list app that will force me to get my work done, no program that will keep community conflict from arising.

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In the March Vital Practices Digest, we offer 5 treasurer basics every parish leader involved with finances might use, with the 5th a resource to help develop year-round stewardship in your congregation.

It’s easy and free to connect with more great resources for your congregation. Subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers and this Vital Practices Digest in your inbox each month.

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Are your tenants your friends? Is that even possible? What is the relationship with the people who use your church’s space?

So many of our churches these days have tenants. It’s practical, mostly. We often have more space and less money than we need, and tenants help pay the bills. When we’re lucky, our tenants are nonprofits and community organizations that do things we are proud to be associated with.

My church has several tenants, including one large one that is a major part of our economic stability. What I have noticed, however, is that the tenant relationship is not particularly conducive to a sense of shared ministry. Tenant relationships tend to have defined expectations, clear exchanges of money, space and services, and not much beyond a friendly hello in the hallway to mark our connections.

In our parish, we have begun experimenting with other ways to offer our space. We are, in essence, asking people to be our friends. When someone comes to ask to rent space, we suggest a more complex relationship. We ask for voluntary donations rather than setting a dollar amount of rent. We ask for some kind of in-kind donation to the life of the church: help with parish work days, an eye out for security when the new groups are in the space, offerings of talent such as music and dance that add to the life of the church.

This approach can make people a little anxious. Many of our neighbors would honestly prefer to have a dollar amount and some rules and be done with it. Many of our parish leaders worry that the church will be short-changed.

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Looking for practical, spiritually grounded resources for your congregation? Subscribe to ECF Vital Practices for articles, tools, and resources by and for congregational leaders. With a subscription, you’ll receive 12 issues of Vestry Papers as well as the monthly Vital Practices Digest delivered to your inbox, all for free.

This month we’re featuring 5 ways to help your newly forming vestry get off to a strong start, being a resource to aid in developing year round stewardship in your congregation.

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Our parish administrator’s office is a bit more cluttered than usual these days, the top of her desk buried under piles of papers and boxes. Not only has she been pushing out the giving envelopes for the year ahead, she’s also printing and delivering year-end giving statements to parishioners and friends and, well, nearly everybody who’s given something to St. George’s in the past year. It’s tax time, after all.

This is a perennial duty I’d bet and it’s a strain on every one of our congregations. Big or small, urban or rural, the annual routine of pushing out the Year-End Giving (Tax Deductible) Giving Statements is a big deal. The fact that gifts to churches are tax-deductible isn’t the reason people give to our congregations, but it certainly is an added bonus. And ensuring that each congregation has sufficient administrative capacity to record and honor each person’s gift and present to them a final report for their tax prep is all part of doing our job.

On the one hand, then, this blog post is a great big shout out to those parish administrators and bookkeepers and clergy and other office help who are doing this work, right now. It’s meaningful, important, and sensitive work, and it’s one of those otherwise unnoticed duties that’s actually part of the glue of our common Christian lives.

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Too many cooks in the kitchen describes a lot of my projects. Collaboration is a vital component to a successful organization but it can sometimes devolve and create headaches. Surely you’ve been there too.
Imagine you’re planning a fundraising event with lots of moving parts. You have an initial meeting to gauge interest, brainstorm ideas, and begin to shape the project. No problem. The issues typically begin in the middle of the project and rise to a frothy foam near the end. Lots of people want to weigh in—some with the mettle to work for a solution and others who prefer armchair quarterbacking. By the final days before the event, everyone has an opinion and suggestions for improvement. And you’re pulling your hair out (or at least I am). 
How do you highlight the good ideas and dismiss the nitpicky ones? How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
A good project management system can help. These can range from low-tech (a dry-erase board or binder) to high-tech (complicated online systems that require specialized training to comprehend). The one that we use is at the higher end (but not highest!) but it’s easy-to-use and has helped avoid some of the last-minute micromanaging. For about two years, we’ve relied on Basecamp for project management. This works pretty well for us, but there’s a monthly charge, which may not be in the budget for some churches. I don’t have a single recommendation for the perfect project management system that will fit everyone’s needs but I can offer some tips as you begin your research. 

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Last December, the Acts 8 Movement released a video which could be customized and shared via social media to proclaim the gospel and invite people to worship.

After it came out, I posted a tutorial about how to do just that, providing video for you to follow along as I customized the video for the church I serve and created the Facebook ad. (Full disclosure: I'm on the core team of the Acts 8 Movement and had advance notice that the video was coming out.) My goal was to help others use the ad in their contexts.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xA52CkfVgP0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 

With the press of the holidays and the start of the new year (which includes a few significant initiatives which I will share soon) it took me a while to go back and analyze the outcome.

If you didn't read the tutorial post, you need to know:

I had never customized a video someone else had created before. I was new to video in general; I first edited video in 2015 for a youth group project.  I had never run a paid Facebook ad in my life.

My goal was primarily to learn from the experience. And I did!

Here's what I learned:

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The 4th of 4 posts - see below for the other three articles.

I can often predict whether an article, resource, or webinar will do well when pushed out in an email or posted on Facebook or Twitter.

Then there are those times that something truly wonderful, inspiring and amazing, or downright practical for everyone to have in hand just falls flat. 

Well, now is your second chance! As part of ECF Vital Practices celebration of Christmas, our editorial team has looked back over 2015 and pulled some our best content that, despite our best efforts, just flew under the radar.

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Advent: A time of preparation; a time of waiting. And, for our congregational leaders, especially those responsible for parish administration, time to make a master list and check it twice. First, for all of the seasonal events and services, next for all the ‘end-of-the-calendar-year’ related administrative tasks: year-end reports, “closing out” 2015’s financial matters, vestry elections, annual meeting planning, etc.

In the December Vestry Papers, we continue to share articles and stories covering some of the practical aspects of church leadership, with emphasis on the role of and providing support to parish administrators – be they employees or volunteer, full or part time.

Our articles include:

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My memories are probably very slanted because even as a boy I was a pretty serious church nerd, but I remember how much I looked forward to one of the latter Sundays in January. Lots of people would turn out to the one worship service my church had that day. The social hall – through which we passed on our way to church and Sunday School – had lots of tables and chairs set up, and nicely decorated tables at that. By 10:00 am Mrs. Pitlock, the neighborhood caterer, and her crew were already bustling in our church kitchen getting the luncheon ready, and every year I knew I could look forward to her delicious glazed carrots.

It was the Sunday of our congregation’s Annual Meeting, and it was a big deal. The lunch was tasty and, even more remarkable, served to us at our seats …on real plates! But, mostly, the meeting was business and a series of people making committee reports. While I was in awe of the seriousness with which my parents participated in this assembly, I confess that I got bored with most of it really quickly; my friends and I would, by the second report or so, have already gotten permission to go play in the churchyard.

Annual meetings don’t get a lot of attention in our common conversation about becoming more mission-minded instead of maintenance-focused. I get it. Annual meetings are, perhaps, one of the last significant vestiges of ‘things congregations have to do,’ and there’s not a lot of imagination or creativity or, frankly, desire around them, in general.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about annual meetings, primarily for two reasons. First, ours is coming up. St. George’s Annual Meeting is on the first Sunday in December. (It makes Advent and Thanksgiving kind of crazy, but I’ve come to really appreciate having everything done – budget, vestry, officers – before the calendar year kicks in.) Second, because I’ve been looking very seriously at turning (most) everything we do into opportunities to form and send forth disciples of Jesus, I wondered if we couldn’t make our annual meeting something more, placing the emphasis instead on a celebratory, grace-filled annual gathering of disciples.

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