New Elders
As you know we asked for suggestions of names of members who could be asked to consider becoming elders and as a result we had a group of names – all of whom have been approached. As you would expect – a number declined and the remainder agreed to pursue this further (by attending our away day and some training from Gavin).
Hopefully the final group of new elders will be ordained in the New Year.
Unitary Constitution
We have now had final confirmation that our new constitution is adopted by the church. This means all matters of governance are now the responsibility of Kirk Session including finance and property. We hope all our retiring Deacons will find new roles in the church to use their gifts and talents.
Away Day - 10 November
We had a good away day with our team of elders and prospective elders. The focus was on some material – 6 essential strategies to help young people discover and love your church
see website - https://churchesgrowingyoung.com/
It’s based on research into churches that are attracting young people and continuing to be churches of all-ages.
Some of the ideas include that younger people want are
o A warm church community that takes Jesus’ message seriously
o Meaningful involvement
o discussion on more topical issues
o feeling of belonging and being needed in the church
o to be able to see church as relevant
There is much more to the material and it is hoped to have church wide meetings (either a day conference or series of meetings) to get us all involved.
Special Interest Groups
A lot of the plans for 2019 are maintaining work that is already underway. There is some thought being given to moving our Tuesday morning open time to Saturday morning to see if it attracts more people.
Sessions plan to trial a new style of communion service has been postponed to March (allowing the December communion to be a part of a celebration of women in ministry). The change in March will simply involve a change to the way that we distribute the elements.
Finance & Property have produced the more demanding reports
For the current year and for 2019 – we are running an operational deficit of £13,000 which means we will need to look at ways of increasing income as well as cutting costs.
In addition to this we have the following significant building costs coming soon
§ Repair church ceiling £3221
§ Replacement of small hall roof £4752
§ Replacement of boilers £20,760
§ Repaint the church ceiling – no estimate yet
Again we will have to look for ways to finance this.
We have in fact decided to use some of our reserves to go ahead and repair the church ceiling to prevent it becoming dangerous (this does not include painting). There will be some disruption to use of the sanctuary – but we have booked the work for 4th & 7th of December. This is simply a repair to plaster – we will have to repaint the ceiling at a later stage.
Graham Whitham, Session Clerk
