E-mail Meeting Notes from August 4, 2008

MoArk Christian Education Board Meeting

August 4, 2008 @ 6:00 p.m.

First GBC of Kennett

The Board met with the following people present:  Kent Luke (President), Bryan Johnson (Secretary/Treasurer), Steve McElwrath and Ryan Mason.  (Chuck Provance, Jeff Smart (VBS at his church) and Shawn Parker (Scheduling conflict) were unable to attend.)

Ryan Mason opened our meeting in Prayer.

Kent Luke went over the minutes from the previous meeting and discussed the options we were examining. 

Update:  Ed Stetzer was unable to work with our schedule for the February 2009 conference.

Discussion on February 2009 Workshop:

We discussed numerous topics of interest that we thought may be the most helpful to our Sister Churches.

Steve talked about the book he is presently reading from Ed Stetzer called, “Turnaround Churches” and what he notes as being foundational for any church growth.  Things such as, “High Expectations of Leadership”, The Vision of the Pastor and Leadership Team, Evangelism as an “attitude” of the Church.

Kent shared that he contacted his Pastor, Jonathon Rice, while he was at the Missions and Ministries Summit in Springfield, MO and asked for possible recommendations of speakers and subject matter.  He made mention of the different areas our denomination is working on and the possible speakers we may be able to bring in.

Ryan called Charles Richardson who is working with “New Church University,” an organization that General Baptist Ministries has been working with to develop new churches and to re-focus established churches.  The areas they address are:

·        Re-Start – Taking an established church and shutting it down and re-starting the congregation under a new name and a renewed directive and open back up as a Church that is re-packaged with a proper focus on the essentials of Church renewal and commitment to the Calling Jesus gave to the Church.

·        New Start --  Starting New Churches.

·        Re-Focus – Taking an established church and helping them to re-focus on their calling as a Church.

After much discussion, it was agreed upon that we will focus on “Re-focusing” our churches as a Theme and that contacts will be made to see if we are able to bring in a dynamic person from the “New Church University” to be our Main Speaker.

Assignments were given as follows:

1.   Bryan Johnson will contact, Charles Richadson, Franklin Demond (Congregational Ministries) and see if Larry McCain is able to lead the February 2009 workshop and if so, what type of agenda or format, he would prefer.

2.   Ryan Mason will contact, Ed Stetzer again and see if we can contact him to be our February 2010 speaker or what date would work best for him.

3.   Emails will be sent out after all the information is attained for the board members to keep updated on the planning development of the Conference.

We are looking at the dates of February 21 or 28 of 2009 at the Kennett Church for the MoArk CE Board Annual Workshop.

Publicity:

We felt that the advertisement process we used last year went well and that we will focus on doing the same thing for the next one but will include an “Autoresponder Service” that will keep those on the list of names updated and informed as to what we are doing as a Board.

The process included:

Letters sent out to all the churches with a form attached for them to sign up for the workshop.

Postcards were used at the beginning of February to remind them of the workshop.

Initial Phone Calls were made to the pastors by each member of the board as a follow-up to the initial letter sent out and sought to get a number of people who they expect may be attending.

A second phone call was made at the beginning of February to verify a number count for the purpose of letting those getting the food together, how many that they should prepare for and get rooms setup for the breakout sessions.

This year, we also will have an opt-in form on the MoArk Website where people can sign-up online and then mail the necessary monies to the CE Treasurer prior to the meeting.

We will also be using an “Autoresponder Service” that will automatically send out information by email about the workshop on a pre-planned periodic basis.

Food Preparation:

We will discuss this further in the next meeting when we have the details nailed down further.

Other Areas of Responsibility:

We have other areas besides the Annual Workshop we want to start developing but this will be taken up at the next meeting assuming we are able to appropriate the speakers and nail down the format of the February 2009 Conference by then.

Next meeting is scheduled for September 29, 2008 @ the First GBC of Kennett at 6:00 p.m.