February 16, 2023 | Deacon Meeting Minutes
February 16, 2023
Attendance: John Genskow, Bruce Winkler, Kristi Lambert, Chuck Falch, James Martin, Kathy Sahlhoff, Vince Maro, Paul Weinke, Gail Graese(call in)
Absent: John Reagan, Anne Hartman
Ex Officio: Mark Schulz, David Forke, Abbi Meyer
Recording Secretary: Dean Gumz
Guests: Mark Oldenberg
John G. called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
1) Opening devotion and prayer - Kathy S
2) Staff Presentation – Abbi
Gave an update on Worship and the Arts.
There are three areas in which she feels called to pursue as a worship leader in our congregation.
A) Passion – Worship prompts. Taking a few minutes at the beginning of worship to help explain the why in addition to the what in worship.
B) Community – While many people have been leading worship at Peace for a long time, she feels there are many pockets of small community but not a large community. Towards that end, she has reached out to everyone who has participated in worship in the past two years and is in the process of meeting with each of them individually.
C) Stewardship – God deserves our best and therefore we need to have more people step up both as worship leaders and tech support. She wants both more volunteers and more commitment from those we have to make the worship aspect better.
Abbi left the meeting.
3) Review Action Items
Reminder to Board to turn in bios
4) Consent Agenda
A) January minutes
B) Pastoral Report
Motion by Kristi to approve the consent agenda. Seconded by Chuck. Motion passed.
C) Policy reviews submitted by Bruce. Specifically, the committee looked at staff expense policy (G7) and designated giving policy (G10). Motion by Chuck and seconded by Kathy to approve these two policy revisions. Motion passed.
5) Staff Updates
Director of Children’s and Family Ministry – David said that we are moving forward with the plan to call Emily Sagissor at the congregational meeting on Feb 19. She is aware that a call is forthcoming and he is hopeful that she will accept but has contacted Concordia about DCE Interns in the event she does not accept our call.
Pastoral call – Mark O. shared that there are ten members of Peace on the call committee and they have met six times. Last month, the call committee distributed a survey to the congregation, and they have 280 responses. They are hoping to have a town hall meeting in April. Mark explained that this is not a quick process as the committee’s goal is to do this right more than do it quickly.
Thus far most respondents are females over 50 who are long-term members/ attenders. While there are many qualities being considered, two that seem to be mentioned often are a younger Pastor and someone who is a dynamic speaker.
Mark O. left the meeting.
6) LCMS Presidential Nomination - Mark
Pastor Mark presented two candidates that he knows as potential candidates for the LCMS Presidential nomination. Rev Dr. Patrick Ferry is the former President of Concordia -Mequon and Rev Dr. Brian Friedrich – the current President of Concordia – St Paul.
Motion by Chuck to submit these two names for nomination of LCMS President. Seconded by Kathy. Motion approved.
7) Congregational meeting - John
There is a congregational meeting on Sunday, Feb. 19 at 10:40 am for the purpose of calling Emily Sagissor / nominee from the floor for the Director of Children’s and Family Ministry.
As per Article III – Selection of Called Workers, Section E, this will be a ballot election.
8) Financials – Gail
Gail and Terry are working on some policies to be presented in the coming month.
Since this is a nonfinancial month, there is no report available currently.
9) Deacon Training – James M
James shared that Peace has a SharePoint account with access for all church leaders to access. This is the location where all Peace information is maintained. This cloud-based system allows all BOD communications to be trackable from the server. There are numerous sub-groups in this site where each group in Peace has storage for their documents and communications.
The board agreed to have a discussion at a future meeting to discuss whether to exclusively use this system for Peace business.
10) Closing Prayer – Pastor Mark
Motion to adjourn made by Paul. Seconded by Bruce. Motion approved.
Meeting was adjourned at 8:58 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Dean Gumz
