Board of Deacons (“BoD”) Meeting Minutes

October 18, 2014

中文翻譯在段落D.

1. In Attendance:

1. Attendees: Pastor Caleb Chang (Senior Pastor), Christopher Cheng (Secretary), Joshua Chang, Lawrence Liang-Shang Gan, Lance Pan, Phil Sailer, Ji-Yong Wang (Treasurer), Xin-Wen Wang, Haiguo Wu, Jimin Xiong, Ruike Wang
2. Invitees: BoE members: Elder Ming-Jer Tsai
3. Absentees: Loren Shih (Head Deacon), Chun-Yi Hu

2. Location: Conference room, church office building.

3. Meeting Agenda & Minutes

1. Meeting started at 9:06 am
2. Deacon Chris opened in prayer.
3. Senior Pastor Sharing and Update (Pastor Caleb Chang)

1. Minister Steven Bowman and Minister Yuegang Zhang have joined the pastoral staff and will be installed tomorrow.
2. Mandarin Gospel meeting: Need follow-up and prayer with those who are interested.
3. The church is looking for a replacement speaker for the spring Mandarin Gospel meeting after the arrangement with the original speaker fell through.
4. Though Roger Williams University is not available, the 2015 Memorial Day CM-youth joint retreat is still alive and alternative sites are being considered.  Roger Williams will be booked for 2016.  No in-house church-wide conference in 2015 in lieu of Memorial Day retreat
5. The church calendar is being updated and will be reviewed by Church Council before the December meeting.

4. Board of Elders (“BoE”) Sharing (Elder Ming-Jer Tsai)

1. A lot of time has been spent getting ready for the annual meeting.  The BoE wants to focus on our church being a spiritual home and to re-commit members to work in unity for God.
2. The BoE plans to review the following policies:

1. Personnel and Benefit Policy for continued education benefits to pastoral staff
2. Scholarship Policy for financial assistance to seminarians and para-church workers.  

3. Missions Committee may need to better publicize the support that the church provides for short term missions trips.
4. For more details, please refer to the October 2014 Board of Elder minutes.

5. Financial Report (Ji-Yong Wang)

5. CBE Total Donation since 12/1/2012: $735,527.72.
6. Up to September 30, our total expense is at 18.9%, and our total offering is at 25.3% of the total annual budget (fiscal year ending June 30)
7. The health insurance premium for our pastoral staff is being reduced for this coming year.  

6. Stewardship report (Lawrence Gan)

1. Property Projects

1. Re-roofing project started on Thursday 9/18, parking lot restrictions were put in place temporarily.  
2. Water leaks have been found due to the roof being in need of repair.  The construction team will replace all the panels after the re-roofing project is finished.
3. Office Masonry Project started 10/1.  Rotten wood was found under threshold of main door.  Addressing this has fixed a number of problems, including mold.  Besides the entrances, new cement has been put on the walkway to basement.
4. Office bathroom project started 10/13.  Both bathrooms will be uni-sex.
5. Office boiler project was started on 8/1, completed on 8/26, and the oil tank was removed on 8/28.  
6. There is a new temporary church sign at the entrance.

2. Property Maintenance

1. Removed handicapped sign on the front of office since the office is not handicap accessible.
2. Replaced elevator emergency phone.
3. Replaced sensor lights around the office, carriage house and the main building.  installed additional sensor lights to the office chimney to shine on the driveway leading to the carriage house
4. Removed two bee nests near the office building upper parking lots.

3. Property Management

1. Purchased a new passenger van on 8/24.
2. Room 214 has been finally converted to a classroom thanks to the initiative of Pastor Chuck and Pastor David.

7. Capital fund discussion (Chris Cheng)

1. The BoD continues to react to capital fund requests on a first come, first serve basis.  It would be best if members of the BoD could understand everything that is needed within the church in the near future to best prioritize capital fund spending.
2. Ruike has put together a draft for the capital budget request form, but the BoD also needs a process for soliciting present and future requests from all ministries and properly budgeting and prioritizing capital fund spending proposals.
3. Summary of brainstorm possibilities:

1. Ask ministries to think carefully about potential capital expenditures in the upcoming years and to submit capital budget requests.
2. Ask ministry leaders or BoD members to review requests first and give first-level approval before bringing them before the BoD.
3. Annually, BoD will examine what is in the capital fund, reserve a certain amount for emergencies and budget the rest for the top items in queue.
4. Each capital fund budget approval should be given a deadline.  If money is not used by that point, they will need to obtain re-approval.
5. Ministry leaders should submit capital requests at the same time as general fund requests.  
6. Chris will recommend to Deacon Loren that he form a team to continue offline discussions to finalize a plan to bring back to the BoD.

8. Social concerns ministry service opportunity (Lance Pan)

1. SCM committee is considering hosting a large scale event sponsored by “Feed my starving children” in 2016.  This organization needs to pack food from large quantities to smaller packages, delivering massive amounts of food, requiring 500 volunteers, a 2300 sq ft staging area, 50 ft wide doors, $22,000 for food.  
2. BoD is asked to assist from a facilities perspective.  Two main concerns: gathering 500 volunteers, where to get the facilities to work out a staging grounds.  
3. Members of the BoD suggested:

1. The church should partner with somebody first to better understand what is involved and needed for such an event
2. It may be best to roll the funding into the SCM annual budget to avoid a special one-time fund request.
3. The SCM committee should discuss what the long-term strategic plan of what happens after if we pull this off.

9. Evangelism update (Haiguo Wu)

1. Past evangelism meeting had over 20 people make a decision to follow Christ and 80 people show interest.
2. Follow-up has been assigned to 10 people and 6 separate fellowships.  They have done initial contact, and will do more follow up.
3. Half of them are already attending either fellowships or church.  
4. Onsite prayer worked out very well with a dedicated room.
5. Still searching for speaker for the spring Mandarin Gospel Meeting.  

10. Deacon Ruike closed in prayer and Chris adjourned the meeting at 12:11pm.