MCC Governing Board January Meeting Update: Discussion, Decisions, and Financial Snapshot

Governing Board Meeting Narrative, January 7th, 2020

Dear Friends,

The Governing Board wishes you all the best for the upcoming year and we hope that your holiday season was filled with peace.

We lift in prayer our friends and colleagues: in Australia as they live with brutal fires devastating their lands; in Puerto Rico as our communities struggle with the aftermath of earthquakes; in Canada, Iran, Iraq, and Britain as these countries grieve the loss of family and friends following a plane being hit by a missile in Iran; in the Philippines, where a volcano near Manilla is spewing ash and debris into the air and appears to be set to erupt; and in the United States Midwest, where tornadoes ripped through many communities leaving a path of destruction. God, hear our prayers.

It is hard, in the midst of such life altering realities, to move into the ongoing work of the Governing Board and we do so while holding these prayers in our hearts. 

Here is a summary of the business we dealt with in our most recent Governing Board Meeting....

Our meeting of January 7th was opened in prayer by Rev. Alberto Najera. We then checked in using the guiding statement and question: Describe Christmas in one word, and what was one highlight that you have experienced over the last six months? Responses to the first, Christmas in one word included: calm, joy, exhausting, fantastic, warm, family, home and busy. Responses to the latter, one highlight of the last six months, included: healthy, accomplished, progress, connection, appreciative, finances getting sorted, good feelings about the staff team.

Every meeting, we take time to dream about the future. During this meeting, we used the question, “What would we do if we knew we could not fail?” The responses were filled with hope and included:  

• Hope that people will see our strengths and use us as a resource for the world
• That we would be looked to for cutting edge queer theology
• That our finances would be strong enough to pay our staff well, support our local churches with excellence, have the ability to well fund emerging churches, have enough to share with the larger world and be able to respond well to disasters, or crisis. 
• That we would be living our dream
• That we own that we are still revolutionary
• That we would have our global community feel connected to around the world with each other and see all involved in strategic planning for MCC globally.

The business component of our meeting began with our “Consent Agenda.” This is the part of the agenda that happens every meeting and does not require a lot of discussion, such as the Minutes of the previous meeting and the Moderator’s Report
https://www.mccchurch.org/governing-board/meetings/moderators-reports/

The Treasurer reports on the work of the Finance Team and on the finances of MCC (which you will find attached in the Financial snapshot attached to this document). We passed a motion thanking Rev. Marsha Warren and Dr. David Williams for their amazing work and dedication on MCC’s finance team.

The Governing Board has been exploring Task Forces and Commissions and the differences between the two. For some, we have been calling them Task Forces and for others Commissions. Task Forces are currently defined in the Governing Board Policy Manual and Commissions are not mentioned. However, people use the term Commissions more often. Therefore, we agreed to change and make consistent our language by using Commissions.  We will drop Task Force from our lexicon. 

Governing Board Webinars
The Governing Board will be hosting two webinars: January 28th and 30th, 2020. The webinar on January 28th will be in English, and the January 30th webinar will be in Portuguese and English. The webinars will take place from 5:00 – 6:30/7:00 PM EST, UTC-5. We would like to hear from you some questions you want to be sure we cover. Please send the questions to Rev. Elder Diane Fisher at [email protected] .

Over the next few months, calls will go out for those who would like to participate in the Commissions arising from General Conference. If you are interested in any of them, please apply once the notice goes out.

The meeting ended with our Moderator, Rev. Elder Cecilia Eggleston closing us in prayer. 

We are so thankful to all of you for making MCC the powerful global ministry that it is today.

Blessings,
Rev. Elder Diane Fisher, Clerk 
Rev. Elder Cecilia Eggleston, Moderator
Mark Godette, Vice-Chair
Chad Hobbs, Treasurer
Clare Coughlin
James Chavis
Rev. Paul Whiting
Rev. Marie Alford-Harkey
Rev. Alberto Najera