Meetings

Last night I was involved in two very positive meetings. The Lighthouse management team meeting from 7-8pm, where we agreed to take a step of faith and create 2 new kitchen/catering posts in the cafe for a 6 month period. While there is an improvement in the volunteer base, it's not sufficient to give Gwen enough time to pursue the development aspects of the Lighthouse. The next 6 months are a vital time for us in terms of increasing the uses and income of the Centre. Let it be said, that I'm quite confident that we will suceed (I'm writing this as a marker to refer back to in 6 months time!!) We also said farewell and thank you to Carol Sharp who has done a terrific job in terms of keeping us on course with all the financial aspects of the project from the very beginning, 18 months ago.

Then it was on to the Congregational Board. I came away from the meeting struck afresh by the fact that we have such a skilled and positive group of people leading this dimension of Hilton Church. The meeting ranged over a wide number of issues and time and time again, many creative and wise suggestions were being made. I count myself very fortunate to be part of such good team. The main item on our agenda was working out how to deal with the wide range of administrative and financial tasks that require to be done within the congregation. Every year, the amount of paperwork seems to get larger and larger, and in our experience the pressures of life, and possibly the age profile of our congregation, makes finding volunteer support increasingly difficult. With our longstanding and long suffering secretary Sandra soon to leave us, this is an issue that we need to address urgently so that we don't end up in chaos.We agreed to form a small working group who would look at all our administration and financial recording keeping requirements with a view to creating a post/s to solve this major challenge for us.I also plan to try and contact other congregations in a similar position to us, to find out how they operate.

Hopefully, I'll be able to look back at this post in 6 months time, and celebrate real progress on a variety of fronts!