CBCGB Board of Elders Meeting Minutes, 2016/04/09

Present: Senior Pastor Caleb Chang, Bryan Che (Secretary), Ke-Chieh Chu (Chair), David Ho, Timothy Lu, Haiguo Wu (Board of Deacons [“BoD”] Representative), Terry Yang, Beata Shih, Eric Chiu, Chris Cheng

Absent: Yuguang He

Notes

• KC opened in prayer 9:00am
• Sharing

• Bryan gave an update on a potential ministry opportunity

• Update to the state of the church (Pastor Caleb Chang)

• Stephen Ministry recruits and retreat went well
• MGM follow-up running well, EE visitations to confirm their “saving faith”
• Sending 3 brothers to Atlanta-CCCN for EE Train the Trainers
• English Pastor and Youth Pastor searches ongoing
• Will hold a farewell to the Lowes 6/26
• Pastors working on building requirements. Deacons Phil Sailor and Josh Chang are coordinating this
• CM is at maximum capacity, and we need to find a way to address the bottleneck
• EM organized a mental health conference. It’s currently on-going and was well-attended Friday evening
• SCC needs a go/no-go decision for Food Packing Project before budgeting
• Discussed how we can raise attendance for informational meetings
• Annual Church Retreat is in planning under leadership of Jiyong, with Yuegang as consulting minister. May need budget increase

• Speaker Joshua Ting

• Metro-South planting updates

• BOD updates        (Deacon Haiguo Wu)

• Major updates provided at church council meeting
• Carriage house parking expansion budget was passed
• Sanctuary projector replacement budget was passed, and the new projector is in place
• BoD working with church expansion team to make sure upper parking lot can be used at night. This will involve adding new lights
• Evangelistic meeting Internet streaming worked well. 200 people viewed this

• Ministry Review - Overseas Mission Ministry (Elder Timothy Lu)

• Eric Chiu provided an update on the Missions Ministry

• Current members: Chris Cheng, Yah-Kong Yang, Bow-nan Cheng, Haiguo Wu, Ruike Wang, Hank Lu, Eric Chiu (Chair)
• 3 joint SCM-Mission conferences since 2013
• Challenges and prayer requests

• Mission awareness

• Short term missions
• Mission educations
• Identify and prepare future full-time missionaries

• Focus area
• “Picking up the torch” from our retirement-age missionaries
• Caring for our missionaries

• Focus areas

• Muslim communities and countries

• Short-term mission

• A tool to disciple and train future missionaries
• Engage and mobilize our church members
• Connect and empower the long term missionaries

• COCM - UK
• Asia with Jason and Ella

• Challenge: standardize policy and training

• Family STM

• Caring for our missionaries

• Annual bake and craft sales
• Care packages
• One-time needs
• Visits

• New missionaries

• Bobo Tang (Muslim)
• Kenny and Cindy Chau (NYU International students)
• Franki Kam (Asian minority)
• Cenchen Liu (Boston international students)
• Ying Xu (Boston international students)
• Richard and Rachel Liu (Taiwan working class)
• Henry Lu (COCM)

• Prayer requests

• Mission pastor

• Discussed whether we would want a full-time or part-time mission pastor and potential requirements and candidates

• Cross-church partnership

• Hoping for New-England mission day in October

• Mission pledge

• Discussion

• Do we need more congregation engagement in missions? How do we lead an overall missions vision across the church?

• Grass-roots on EM
• Need more top-down engagement on CM
• Committee can’t lead anyone

• Discussed if we should evaluate the missions policy

• In general, the policy is good
• Will review details

• Discussed that we need an overall missions strategy and vision and how we would implement that
• Chartered missions committee to create a draft vision and strategy document for review with the BoE. This would become the basis for broader church-communication and motivation of ministries

• April Information Session (4/17) planning/agenda        (All)

• Reviewed and approved 4/17 informational meeting agenda
• Discussed church building expansion funding options. Will have congregation vote on final plan if there are any significant changes

• Youth and English Pastor Search updates (Pastor Caleb and others)

• English Pastor Search Committee still in the process of reviewing applicants and considering whether to invite any to be a formal candidate
• Youth Pastor Search Committee reviewing candidates

• Elder Nomination (All)

• Reviewed current member terms
• Elders eligible for renomination will decide by May BoE meeting if they want to be renominated
• Reviewed potential candidates

• Elder Timothy closed at 12:02pm