FRLC Board Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

2:00 pm MST

 

Present: Brian, Gary, Melanie, Mary, Ed, Bohdan

 

Check In & Prayer Ed is scheduled for surgery tomorrow-please keep him in prayer. Also his wife as she awaits her first call.

 

Approval of Minutes: received.

 

Treasurer’s report: No out of the ordinary income or expenses. Closing balance $1612.51 Continued need to get the message out about our need for donations. Thrivent Choice is helpful: $395 new dollars came in overnight. Every dollar helps! Mary mentioned the possibility of a fundraising campaign through Schwan’s. For the first 45 days, Schwans donates 20% of any order through the program. Brian will look into it before the next meeting. A question was asked about financial response to the last newsletter. There was a recent deposit was $175, some of which may have been in response to the newsletter. Ed has additional money to send to Brian.

 

            Coordinator’s report (Ed): The monthly lecture series continues at Transfiguration as a part of the development of the Lutheran Recovery Network. They are getting about 100 people in attendance. The name of the group is not finalized.

Three people who found us on the website and contacted Ed, and there have been several phone calls recently. A pastor from Arizona is interested in developing a recovery ministry. Another was referred by the Synod office.  A LCMS pastor called who been in the FRLC 11 years. He thanked us for our ministry and wants to get more involved in the Fellowship. Two new members joined. Ed connected an inquirer to a member with sexual addiction.

There are typically 4-5 people per week at noon phone meeting. The last newsletter had 31 copies returned for an invalid address. Ed will work on updating the database while recovering from surgery. He also filed the IRS report for the year.

 

Old Business:

           

Next year’s retreat: Last month we discussed doing the next retreat in conjunction with lay fellowship in the Minneapolis area. Ed will explore some options and will bring them to the next meeting.  We discussed the timing of the retreat—not winter; maybe in spring after Easter. Easter is early next year. A concern was expressed about tying the lay fellowship too much to one congregation. The intention is not to affiliate the organization with the congregation. The lecture series was a cluster event and the retreat will have invitations go out nationally. They are trying to find a big name speaker who will attract people.  FRLC members would lead workshops. Members of the lay fellowship and the FRLC will share the leadership of the retreat. Several questions were asked, including “Are the folks in this group going to be willing and open to having recovering Lutheran clergy there?”, and “How many lay people might be involved?” Since the group is Lutheran, we anticipate no issues with Lutheran clergy being present.  We have no idea what the attendance will be–perhaps a hundred. There will be some joint meetings and separate meetings for clergy. We would hold the FRLC annual meeting there, and other sessions for whatever we choose to do together. Lay and clergy groups would be together for a banquet with the speaker and some of the breakout workshops. Ed will bring more ideas to our next meeting. A suggestion was made to consider Dr. John MacDougall, former Director of Spiritual Guidance at the Hazelden Foundation—he’s a pastor, he’s well known although not Lutheran and is from Minnesota. It was suggested that FRLC members invite recovering people from the churches we serve or have served. A board member asked “how many are on our mailing list?” There are 580 newsletters mailed out. 225 of those are pastors in recovery.

 

 

Web page: Melanie has posted the materials Ed prepared for LRN and Conscious Contact but the links aren’t working yet. They will be fixed soon. A suggested was made that we post the preamble for the Thursday meeting to the website.

Melanie suggested we add a 7^th tradition statement for the Thursday meeting. We will ask Brian to craft the words. Melanie will send email to him with some ideas. She also suggested adding a PayPal button to the website. It was moved, seconded and passed to take the above actions.

 

            Newsletter & E-newsletter: Bodahn sent material to Ed for the next issue.

 

New Business:

            Other denominations: Melanie searched websites from other denominations and found a couple of good ideas. There is an Episcopal site that has a calendar of recovery events across the country. We could consider doing this through LRN when it is more developed. Another group had an item asking their members to make gifts to their organization through their wills.  Melanie will mention this idea in her in email to Brian. The idea of networking with these groups was raised at the retreat. Does anyone want to pursue contacting them?

Anything else? There was a “newcomer” to sobriety at last Thursday’s phone meeting.

 

Gary closed the meeting in prayer.