Sr. Warden’s Annual Report

 

                                       As my second year as Sr.                                        Warden closes I believe St.                                        John’s is in a better place than                                        we were a year ago.  While we                                        have yet to start our new building, our membership appears to be stable and growing some and our finances are better than they were last year.  We have entered this year with a slight surplus and pledges for 2008 are up considerably.  We continue to look at finances for the new building and plan to have a major fund raising push by early spring to see if we can’t raise the needed money.

 

As I reported last year the Diocese now considers us a proto-parish which means we are well on our way to being a full fledged parish.  We will still be getting some financial assistance this year, but it is 10% less than last year and we are giving more back to the diocese than last year.  The number of pledging units for the coming year is up to 100 which is 10 more than last year.  We did lose some valued members this past year but again we more than made up for the loss with newcomers.

 

This past year we held a vestry retreat where we used the book “12 Keys to an Effective Church” by Kennon Callahan.  This retreat identified four items that we felt needed action and we applied to the Diocese for a grant to assist us in these areas.  We did not get the grant, but we have made progress on the items that were identified.  We purchased a new color copier using funds given by a parishioner for the purpose of purchasing office equipment.  With this copier we expect to produce better looking printed material that will be more attractive to newcomers.  Two new people have started Christian education training.  This is necessary to allow implementation of the J2A (Journey to Adulthood) portion of the Catechesis of the Good Shepard Christian Education program.  We have identified two parishioners for training in maintaining our web site.  The training will be done by another parishioner experienced in this.  The web site has been found to be a significant source of new members.  The fourth item was to bring in a paid consultant to assist with our phase 3 fund raising.  This was potentially the most expensive of the four items that would have been funded by the grant.  We have contacted several people and recently have found a parishioner that is going to take a course in this so that he can function as our

consultant.  His previous banking experience will also support this.  So in spite

of the fact that we did not get our grant we have found other ways to achieve all four items that were identified.  This is an indication that God is looking out for St. John’s and wants us to succeed in our mission.

 

This year the “One-to-Grow-on” project was chosen to be the completion of a new sign for the front of the church.  We have the design completed, have applied for the building permit, and the contractors have started working.  Hopefully by spring we will have a new sign.  The work on last year’s project on the stained glass windows has continued with the completion of all windows in the nave except the large round window, which has been designed.  The first window in the sanctuary has been done and the others are all paid for.

 

Another significant project that was undertaken this year was to upgrade our computer systems.  This was done in conjunction with the new copier, which has a computer built into it.  We have established a wireless network so that both of the office computers can now communicate with each other.  DSL high speed internet service was purchased as well as new virus protection software.  Our system is now much more efficient as well as being more secure.

 

The parish survey that was completed during 2006 was helpful in evaluating our effectiveness against the 12 Keys to an Effective Church that was used in the vestry retreat.  One of the areas that we are seriously deficient in is having enough parking space.  Adequate parking space is an important key to attracting new members.  We are currently examining some alternatives for solving this.  Of particular concern is parking during the construction of the new parish hall when we have to tear down the old parish hall first to provide space for the contractor to work.  This would leave us with no parking lot.  The vestry is currently considering a couple of options to solve this problem.

 

As we continue to grow our need for formal Policies and Procedures to administer the parish has increased.  We have initiated work on revising existing procedures and writing new ones.  We plan to complete this project in the coming year and then establish a routine tri-annual review and revision process.  Those of you with a good memory will realize that this is the same status that I reported last year.  Little or no progress was made