FRLC Board Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

2:00 pm MDT/3 pm CDT/1:00 pm PDT/4:00 pm EDT

 

 Check In & Prayer: Present: Ed, Tom, Melanie, Brian, Bohdan

 

Approval of Minutes from March Meeting MSP to accept them.

 

Treasurer’s report: We have had some nice contributions recently and no extraordinary expenses. The balance is $3,246.37. We affirmed the decision last month to continue to pay the Coordinator during his sabbatical. There is still a little income is still coming in from the Schwans campaign and we received a check from Thrivent. A question was asked whether we had received anything from the Amazon Smiles program. A couple board members signed up and when they make purchases receive a notice that they have made a contribution to the FRLC. The treasurer is not aware that we have received anything, but will look into it.

 

 Coordinator’s report: The Coordinator continues to handle inquiries and send contributions to Brian. This week they began offering what is intended to be a weekly “Conscious Contact meeting” using the format they developed during the workshops last year (which is posted on the FRLC website). Work is beginning on developing a website for new fellowship. The Board will be asked to look at the website for the new Fellowship and give input on it before it is launched. The Coordinator is meeting with a musician from the Twin Cities in preparation for developing a liturgy for recovery worship, intending it to be a resource for the new fellowship, available on the to-be-developed website. This would be funded with some of the grant money which Transfiguration LC received. Following his sabbatical, the Coordinator and his associate will start working on planning first national gathering. It was suggested that they contact the group in Fargo that runs the ad re Recovery Worship in the classified section of The Lutheran magazine (now “Living Lutheran”). We think this is “Lost & Found” recovery ministry. Another suggestion was made to look at the liturgy the Episcopal church developed for alcohol awareness Sunday.

                       

Old Business:

 

Retreat: While there was interested expressed by a half dozen people there were not enough participants to meet the retreat center minimum. The planning team reached out by phone and email to members in the Colorado area and to prior retreat participants before making this decision. Travel costs and schedule conflicts seemed to be the main issues. The retreat center contract was cancelled and motel reservations made for a facility which is near a church where we intend to meet. The motel has free conference rooms in case we need them and serves breakfast as part of the package. We intend to go through the 12 steps in our sessions and attend a local meeting. Melanie has some material that she will put together which can be used in the discussions also. The Coordinator asked Melanie to write up an article on revised plan to go out in the e-news.

Bohdan found many of the contacts to be out of date. While we request address corrections in our mailing, some go to churches but the pastor it was intended for has moved on—the address is valid but it is not reaching the member.

Given the difficulty people have had attending this retreat we may want to go back to some place like Las Vegas that has cheaper airfare and is easy to get to. We might also want to stick with the time frame between annual meetings and Ash Wednesday. The Coordinator reminded all that the best success has been had in going someplace warm in the winter.

 

 

New Business:

 

Free Conference Call video service: The secretary has become aware that the same call service we use now for Board meetings and Recovery meetings has developed a video call service. It is free, can handle up to 25 callers, and you have the option to call in on the phone like we do now if you prefer to do it that way or don’t have access to a computer/camera/internet. The host has to be on the call for the video to work but the audio portion of the call worked without the host. The other ministry is going to try this service. She will report on how it works after they’ve used it a couple times. Information on the service is an email along with these minutes. The home page for this service is FreeConferenceCall.com.

 

The chair noted that progress is being made and encouraged the Coordinator to let us know if there is anyway the rest of us can assist on development of new fellowship.

 

At the next meeting we will discuss the possibility of having board members to make phone calls to help update the database.

 

Brian closed with prayer.

 

Next meeting: May 4, 2016 2:00 pm MDT/2 pm CDT/1:00 pm PDT/3:00 pm EDT 12:00 pm