How Church Works - Church Council and Church Council Meetings
Your SUM Church Council – what is it and what do they do? Your SUM Church Council consists of the chairpersons of the primary committees that the church is required to have: Trustees, Staff-Parish Relations (SPR), Finance, and Nominations. At SUM, we have a Church Council Chair who oversees all of these committees, and we also include the two Lay Leaders who serve at the invitation of the pastor. These people are the core voters at a church council meeting. However, anyone who is a member of SUM and attends a church council meeting also has a vote on anything that needs to be decided at a church-wide level.
The Trustees manage things like our insurance and maintenance of the campus and parsonage. SPR functions like the human resources department of the church and supports the staff. Finance oversees the budget as well as pledging and stewardship. Nominations identifies and approves candidates to serve on the various committees and focuses on leadership development. The two Lay Leaders serve as representatives of the congregation and help inform the clergy of the direction the congregation wants the church to go along with being a general sounding board to support our clergy.
As you can imagine, most activities are managed at the committee level, but occasionally there are things that require a vote at the larger church council, or things that we simply feel should be presented to the larger church body. At SUM, we try very hard to be transparent about activities and decisions through our Sunday morning announcements, the Saturday Messenger announcements and articles, and attendance at as many committee meetings as possible by our leaders so there is a two-way information flow. And if you miss all of that, the church council meetings and preliminary distribution of reports are a great way to keep an eye on all the amazing things going on at SUM! Also, I write an article after the meeting that includes a link to the minutes which includes updates from all active committees, not just the primary ones listed above. It’s an impressively long document. (Thank you to Leslie Lahue for being our church conference secretary!!)
Whew! This was quite dry, wasn’t it? We work hard to keep the church council meetings from being too long, so if you want to attend to hear about things first-hand, please email me, and I’ll add you to my distribution list. These meetings are also announced a minimum of two weeks prior to the date. Even visitors to the church are welcome to attend and have a voice, but no vote. So, bring your questions!
Our next meeting will be on Sunday, September 24th at 6:00 PM in the Barn. We also have the November 19th meeting on the calendar with the time to be determined since our District Superintendent will attend this one (and he sets the time).
Look forward to seeing you!
- Jennifer Acheson
SUM Church Council Chair