Thursday, August 30, 2012

Overview of Transition Team meeting 8/28


The Emerging Unified Church of Carlisle
Overview of Transition Team Meeting
August 28, 2012

On Thursday, August 28, 2012, the Transition Team conducted its sixth meeting.  We have begun to hear some questions regarding our progress or lack thereof.  All of you have probably heard, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”  And we are going to have to take some time to unify our churches and make it the very best house of worship which we can imagine it to be. 

The unifying of our three downtown United Methodist churches into one unified church has not happened before in our neck of the woods.  While the Co::Lab provided us with a basic framework within which to operate, we have been developing the reporting mechanisms and structure with which to operate efficiently and productively.  For some of us, we have had to adjust the way that we typically have functioned as we grapple with the significance of new terms, a multitude of tasks, new accountability procedures and ever-occurring deadlines. 

We strongly believe that communications is extremely important – it is one of our top priorities. We have provided an overview of every Transition Team meeting and will continue to do so.  As the secretary of the Transition Team, I have been charged with recording the minutes of each meeting and conveying the major events of each meeting to all of you through these Overviews.  The minutes are received by every Transition Team member, and copies of the Overviews are provided to all of our members at each of our three campuses.

To be as succinct as possible about Tuesday’s meeting, I would share that I now feel that the Transition Team has in place everything that we will need to move forward.  If we were building a football stadium and before one shovel of dirt was able to be moved to erect the stadium, the basic infrastructure to support such construction would have to be in place.  Infrastructure typically refers to the roads, water supply, sewers, electrical grids and telecommunications needed to support a stadium filled with 60,000 fans.

For us, the infrastructure for us to operate as a Transition Team has been the creation of Focus Group Status Reports, Transition Team Status Reports, A Handbook of Roles and Responsibilities for Transition Team and Focus Group members and a new calendar for meeting dates and reporting dates.  A member said that after our work has been completed other churches who decide to unify can use these documents and reporting tools for their work.  We had to create them first!  Our working infrastructure is now complete! 
July 1, 2013, remains the day when our church will officially begin to operate under one roof, and we will finally be one church. Our first unified service in our transitional facility will occur on Sunday, July7, 2013.  
Transition Team
Pastoral Team                        Allison                         First                                    Grace
Jim VanZandt, Chair                 Ron Axsom                  Dennis Downey, Co-chair     Colleen Kulp
Bishop Neil Irons                     Ann Cook                    Tracy Horgan                        Kerm Leitner,
                                                                                                                                Secretary
Mira Hewlett                           Jeff Harpel                    Debbie Washinger                 Randy Noaker
Susan Stewart                         Joanne Reynolds            Lois Weibley                        Dianne Otto
Dennis Keller, District Superintendent    
Our next scheduled meeting is Thurs., September 13, at 6:30 pm. 

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