Note: The Board will be available starting September 9 between services in the Fireside Room. If you have any questions, please come to the Fireside room and speak to them direclty or you may email them using our email form.

Click on a date below to read the full Board update.

August 10, 2008 - Board Update

Hello South Metro Vineyard!  If you think it’s been a while since you’ve heard an update from the board, you are correct.  Believe us, when we sat down Sunday night to meet, it seemed like it had been quite a while since we formally met.  We have met a couple times, but this is the first time we’ve had much to report to the church.  You can expect more updates monthly as we go forward, now that the summer schedule is over.

Before we talk about the topics of the night, it’s worth a little time to stop and remember where we’ve been over the past year.  If you’ll recall, it was almost a year ago when the board informed the church that our senior pastor was stepping down from his role.  We can truly thank God for all that He’s provided for this church over the past year.  Without His direction and strength, we wouldn’t be as strong and healthy a church as we are today.

A major portion of our meeting was a discussion around how things are going with the church.  The board is very happy with the health and engagement of the church.  We are continuing to improve our worship services on Sunday mornings, and we know these services will get better as other changes are made in the fall.  As always, we’d love to hear from our members on how they think services are going.  Feel free to e-mail us through the e-mail address you find on this page.

We also spent some time talking about staffing needs going forward.  As always, this is going to be dictated by budget and need, but we are continuing to look for an intern to help Greg with the Youth and we’re trying to plan which positions need hired next when we have the budget to support it.  Until then, we will continue to rely on our strong current staff and lay leaders to help drive much of our ministry.

We’d like to take a moment to call out some great work that Carly Shellhammer is doing with our Children’s Ministry.  We are thrilled with the changes happening in this ministry, and tonight we decided to approve some extra funding to support some other changes she has planned on making.  If you haven’t been back in the children’s area in a while, take a walk back there in the next couple weeks and see what’s going on.

Greg and Bill are continuing to drive training of our leadership on the new church vision.  Stay tuned for more information in the coming months as they are refining their thoughts.

Finally, we had an extended discussion on our finances.  We are pleased to say that we continue to build our financial acumen, and are thrilled that our giving is keeping pace and even outpace our expenses.  It’s important to mention that we are also working to reduce those expenses by investigating individual opportunities to reduce our operating costs while maintaining the needs of our church.  This allows us to fund a couple requests, including the children’s one discussed earlier.  In October, the board and staff will be going through the budgeting process, attempting to plan our finances for the next 9 months of the year and eventually changing our fiscal year to start in the fall.

That’s it.  As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact one of us directly or send an e-mail to our board address.  Thank you for your continued prayer for this leadership team and our ability to follow God’s will for our church.

April 6, 2008 - Board Meeting Update

Please read the following letter from the board to the church body:

We are pleased to announce that the position of Lead Pastor has been offered to Greg Perkinson, and he has accepted.

In September we asked Greg to take on the responsibility and role of Interim Sr. Pastor. By November, the search team was in place and putting their processes in place. Meanwhile we received so much positive feedback from the congregation about the job Greg was doing that we decided that it would be wrong if we did not consider him a candidate for this role.

Over the next few months, the search team contacted every Vineyard church throughout the US in an attempt to collect potential candidates. (Our search team did a wonderful job of executing the search. Their tireless work is a testament to the wonderful people that served on this team.) While there were some applicants, and we thoroughly investigated their potential, there was a growing belief that this was not the right path.

By February we were seeing great and Godly things happening in our church. We saw a healthier church than we had seen in a long time. We saw renewed commitment to God's work, and a trust in our staff's leadership. Finally we saw a great working relationship between our two pastors, Greg and Bill.

Near the start of Lent, the Board felt that we knew where God was leading us in the search, but we wanted to be sure. Everywhere we turned, we received confirmation throughout the church and the greater Vineyard community that we were on the right path. Our church members were raising it in individual comments. Our Vineyard area leader, Jon Marsden, and our regional leader, Happy Leman, were strongly encouraging us to appoint Greg. We shared our direction with the search team, and they were unanimously behind it. So we decided to take the 40 days leading up to Easter to pray and fast, and ask God to close the door if we were heading down the wrong path. He did not close that door. In fact, he held it wide open and encouraged us even more to enter it.

As a Board we are confident that we have discerned who God wants in the position of Lead Pastor of this church. Greg has been doing a great job in the interim role. He knows our church and we know him. It was with great joy that we extended the offer to Greg, and we were thrilled that he accepted the position of Lead Pastor for South Metro Vineyard.

We are also pleased to announce that Bill Paxton has consented to stay on indefinitely in his part-time role as Executive Pastor. Bill will report to Greg, and will help him lay the foundation for a healthy and vibrant future.

Also, we asked two people to join the Board: Jane McCampbell and Brian Geraty. We look forward to working with them as together we seek God's best for our church.

We are grateful to God for his guidance, and we are grateful to you for your prayers and support. As always we welcome your feedback and questions.

With you in His service,
Beverly Johnson
Bruce Lyke
Bill Paxton
Phil Shellhammer

February 8 , 2008 - Board Meeting Update

The board met this evening and had a wonderful time of discussion. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of details to share in this update. We discussed potential new board members and spent a lot of time discussing the pastoral search process. No major decisions were made tonight (so this update will be quite short), but we believe the Lord is leading us in these discussions and we look forward to updating you in the near future.

Please continue to pray for the leadership of this church, the senior pastor that God has already chosen for us and the search team who continues to diligently work to find that person.

January 21, 2008 - Board Meeting Update

The board met this evening and talked through a few specific subjects:

• We reviewed the celebration service for John Guist.  It seemed that the church really enjoyed being able to thank the Guist family for their years of service.  We also got some very positive feedback from John, as he expressed his appreciation for the love the church had shown.
• There were two major facilities questions that needed to be addressed:
• The Auditorium Computer – we are going to purchase a new one, as the current PC can’t handle the demands required for worship and other events.
• The Office Copier – we are going to solicit some copier bids, as we believe there may be an opportunity to save some money by leasing a new one.
• We spent the rest of the evening reviewing potential candidates for two open board positions.  We are in a position now, where we need to look at filling those roles.  Over the next couple weeks, we plan to ask a couple potential candidates to come in and talk with the board about potentially joining this work.
• We met with Russ Sinkler via phone (he was currently out of state) to
  follow up on a letter he sent the board concerning the direction the
  church has taken over the past several years.  He wanted to provide some
  insights from his perspective, as well as give some ways we may want to
  consider moving forward in the future

 

We’ll have another meeting in a couple weeks.  Look for another update at this time.

January 7, 2008 - Board Meeting Update

The board met in our regularly scheduled bi-weekly meeting.  We had a great meeting with some strong discussion about the future of our church.

John & Paige had some questions we needed to answer for their church plant.  We spent the first part of the meeting discussing these questions in order to answer them completely and quickly.

We also spent some time discussion Paula’s resignation and the plan for replacement in this role.  In the short term, we are going to fill in with volunteers as Greg and Bill determine recommendations for replacement and who should fill the role.

We talked more about some other leadership positions within the church as well, specifically around our major ministries.

We spent a large chunk of time discussing how the search was going for the new senior pastor and reviewing Greg’s great performance so far.  In the coming weeks, we’ll have the search committee provide an update to the church as well.

Finally, we discussed the financial plans for the church going forward this year.  We’ll present a more detailed budget in the coming weeks.

Next meeting is in a couple weeks.  We’ll provide another update then.  God bless you all...

November 12 , 2007 - Board Meeting Update

The board met on Monday evening.  We reviewed the feedback from the town hall meeting, and decided to make CD copies of the meeting for members who missed it.  For the next couple weeks, the board will meet every other week, as we begin the work around our financial planning for the new year.  We made a few other decisions around end-of-year spending and holiday plans for the staff.

With the board meeting every other week, the board updates will be less frequent.  We apologize for the delay in getting these out lately, but will commit to making sure these updates get posted quicker.

November 11 , 2007 - Board Meeting Update

The board met with the church in a special Town Hall Meeting on 11/11/07.  If you were unable to attend this meeting, there are CDs available at the church in the bookstore area.  Otherwise, below is a recap of what was discussed:

First 90 Days

• The board was able to accomplish quite a few necessary tasks in the first 90 days since Chris announced he was leaving:
• Held a church-wide meeting telling everyone what happened and what our plan was going forward
• Instated Greg Perkinson into the Interim Senior Pastor role
• Opened up multiple lines of communication
• Board Updates
• E-mail address:  board@southmetrovineyard.com
• Fireplace room meetings between services
• Met w/ Jon & Sue Marsden, our Vineyard Area Pastoral Care Leaders
• Met w/ Happy Lehman, our Vineyard Regional Pastoral Care Leader
• Resolved our church governance: the relationship between the board and the senior pastor as a delicate balance of leadership, where if one or the other become dominating in decision power, the church can be negatively affected.  We want a strong Sr. Pastor and a strong Board.
• Developed the critical path for hiring a Sr. Pastor

• Met with members of the last Search Committee to hear their insights, tips and recommendations.
• Met with John Guist on October 1 to hear his plans-to-date on church planting, and see how we could best support him.  As a result we relieved him of most SMVC duties (but not his hours) so he could focus on church planting.

• Asked six people to be on the Search Team, and they met for the first time on Sept. 21

Financials

• We provided a quick overview of our finances.  Overall, we’re close to our budget, but we’ve seen a decline in giving lately that we’ll need to address in our budget for 2008.  More to come…

Search Committee

• We’ve chosen a search committee.  They are Deb Strayer, Jan Pedersen, Lia Ryan, Mark Parr, Chad Austin, Craig Dare.
• They will be working toward posting the job description and collecting resumes.
• If you would like to contact them, use this e-mail address:  searchteam@southmetrovineyard.com

Staffing Update

• The board reported a few changes in the staff:
• Tim Pulkrabek – One of our interns has decided to leave his position.  We do not plan to replace this role at this time.
• Kellen Bloom – Kellen is continuing to increase responsibility as an intern for our youth program.  We will provide a small stipend to support his work for us.
• Daris Lawrenz – Daris has decided to stay on in the role of custodian.
• John Guist – As you may remember, we asked John to stay working 32 hours a week for the first 90 days while we sorted out how to ensure the church was supported through this transition. 
• Now that we feel more comfortable with our direction, we have decided to reinstate our initial plan for John’s move into church planting
• In mid-October we released John from most of his responsibilities but still paid him for 32 hours/week to help him with his church planting efforts.
• On December 1, John’s hours will be decreased to 20/week.  All of his hours currently are being dedicated to planning for the church plant
• On December 31, John will leave the church staff completely and begin his full-time work of planning the new church plant.
• The church will continue to plan out how this new plant will be supported.  We plan to set up a fund for members to donate to, as well as investigate whether we can set aside money within the church’s budget for next year.
• Bill Paxton – We’ve asked Bill to join the staff in a part-time role as Executive Pastor.  Bill’s role was needed to help provide Greg leadership & mentoring support, as well as to help shoulder some of the ongoing responsibilities.
• We feel like Bill was the ideal candidate for this role given his past experience in the church and business world
• This role will report to Greg Perkinson

The Next 90 Days

• A few key highlights in the next 90 days:
• The search committee will continue their work of posting the position and collecting resumes.
• The Board will
• Be a resource for the Search Team.
• Support the staff.
• Listen to your concerns and answer your questions.
• 2008 Financial Planning
• Look for an additional board member or two
• We understand the search process is longer than we had hoped
• Therefore we have agreement from Greg that he will take on the interim role until August 31, 2008
• We also believe Greg is doing an excellent job and we’ve heard from the church about how well he’s doing so far.  In light of this, we have reversed our earlier decision, and will allow Greg to apply for the Sr. Pastor position.
If you have any questions, please feel free to send us an e-mail or contact any one of us individually.

October 15 , 2007 - Board Meeting Update

Over the past couple weeks, the board has focused on a few key decisions that need to be made:

1. Search Committee – We have invited several members of our church membership to assist by being on the search committee. These members will be attending a meeting the week of 10/21, where we will provide them details around the commitment required for this role. Once they agree to be on the committee, we will post their names to this site.

2. Search Committee Process Planning – We have built a plan around the process the search committee will utilize to begin their work. The board will meet with them for the first initial meetings to help rewrite the job description and provide some direction. After that, the committee will take over the tactical work of posting the position, advertising it and collecting resumes.

3. The Next 90-days – The board has spent a great deal of time in the past two meetings discussing what, if anything, will change as we look past our 90-day plan that was written when Chris left. Many factors are being discussed, including finances and staffing needs. We hope to finalize that plan by mid-November.

4. Financial Planning – We have had to continue to plan out our finances and look at spending decisions. For example, we have approved some financial support to a couple members of our church, as well as ensured that the Fruit of the Vine Ministry is being supported financially by our church going forward. As the year is ending, this will continue to be an important topic of discussion.

5. Staffing – We have also spent some time discussing staffing to ensure Greg and team is supported correctly. Our intern, Tim, has decided to resign, and his work on the team will be missed. We are also still looking for a custodian, and Greg is interviewing candidates currently for that role. Greg will also begin the formal staff review process, which should be completed at least once a year.

The board continues to be available for any questions you might have or comments you’d like us to know. Please feel free to e-mail us at board@southmetrovineyard.org . Also, please continue to keep praying for our church, our staff, and the members who will be taking on the responsibility of being on the search committee.

October 1 , 2007 - Board Meeting Update

Over the past two weeks, the board has met and discussed search committee process & potential members we would like to ask to help on the committee. 

The process will look something like this:  Starting later this month, the board and search committee will start regular meetings and begin to update the job description we used in the past.  This will take several weeks, as we want to ensure the team as a whole understands exactly what we are looking for in this new pastor.  Once the job description is complete, the search committee will take on the responsibility of advertising the position, collecting resumes and screening candidates.  They will provide the board with consistent updates on the process and potential candidates.

We have begun asking a few select members of our church to join the search committee.  We have not been able to contact everyone yet, but will over the course of the next week.  By the 15th, the team will be in place and will start this all-important work.

The board also met with John Guist on 10/1.  As he mentioned in service on Sunday, 10/7, we wanted to ensure we understood whether or not he and Paige are fully committed to the church plant plan.  John assured us that, although it may be a difficult change and the path is not clear yet, he and his family are preparing for this opportunity that God has put it on their heart to do.  Over the next couple months, John is going to provide the board with a tentative plan for timing and process that he would like to follow in their church plant.  To allow this to happen, we’ve reduced some of his responsibilities while not reducing his hours.  Please continue to pray for John & Paige as they work through this plan.

This week, the board will be completing the search committee member invites and planning the first committee meeting.  Please continue to pray for this church and God’s best for South Metro Vineyard.

September 17, 2007 - Board Meeting Update

The board met on Monday night, 9/17. The following details what was discussed that night.

First, we asked a couple members of the last pastoral search committee to come and provide us what they learned from the past experience. Amy Berletic and Michelle Carlson were able to provide us some valuable insights on the search process, as well as their thoughts around what our church needs and what skills they would like to see in a new senior pastor. This took up a majority of our time during the meeting. We’re not going to put most of their comments here, as most of the information they provided will be incorporated into the search process we create over the next couple meetings.

The board also spent a large chunk of time talking about potential board candidates to replace Marc Sutton. As we’ve said before, we would like to fill this position, but want to make sure that we choose the person that God would like to see on our church’s board. We will pray on it this week and then hopefully move forward with asking a new member in the next week or two.

Lastly, we discussed potential search committee members. That list will be more detailed over the next couple weeks as we design the rest of the search committee process.

September 10, 2007 - Board Meeting Update

The major part of the meeting revolved around developing the critical path for hiring a Sr. Pastor.  Working from documents from our last Search Committee, and a document from the University Vineyard in Fresno, California, we identified the critical steps that must occur, and determined the next steps in the sequence. 

The Deacons have set the Fall Work Day for September 29.  They have also gotten bids to fix the front wall of the auditorium, and work will begin shortly.  Additionally they are taking bids for lawn mowing and snow removal for the church.  If you know anyone who might want to bid on these projects, please have them contact Chris Eyberg.

Jon Marsden, our Vineyard Area Pastoral Care Leader and Sr. Pastor of River Heights Vineyard Church, has offered to work with our church in any helpful way he can during our transition.  We appreciate his wisdom and willingness, and Greg has asked him to teach on Sunday, September 30.

Just a reminder that Greg is not a candidate for the Sr. Pastor position.  That is our agreement with him, and it is designed to take some pressure off of him while he takes on the responsibilities of being the Interim Sr. Pastor.  Some people asked both him and Board members about it on Sunday, so Greg asked us to post this reminder.

After being our custodian for a number of years, Daris Lawrenz finds that his schedule no longer permits him to do the job.  We want to publicly thank Daris for his service to SMVC over the years.  Therefore, we are looking for a new custodian.  Inquiries should be directed to Greg Perkinson.

Our next meeting is Monday, Sept. 17.  Members of the 2004 Search Committee will join us to share their insights and suggestions about the process.

September 5, 2007 - Board Meeting Update

The board met on the evening of September 5 and below are the different points that we discussed. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail the board at board@southmetrovineyard.org.

The board will be meeting with Happy Lehman, our Vineyard Regional Leader, when he comes to the Minneapolis area in early November. Although our search process will be well underway by that time, he should provide us some unique insights into the Vineyard movement and potential candidates throughout the entire region.

After 13 years of service to our church as a Board member, Marc Sutton has retired from that position. Marc recently shared with fellow Board members that he thought at this point in his life it was better to step aside, and sought our thoughts and counsel on the matter.  After a lengthy discussion we concurred with his reasons, and blessed him on his way.

We thank Marc for his outstanding service.  He always brought wisdom and clarity to any discussion.  As a man of prayer and of the Word, Marc brought a biblical perspective to all decisions.  His help over the years was invaluable.  It was a privilege to work with Marc, and we benefited from his thoughtful insight. We encourage you to personally thank him the next time you see him. Over the next few weeks the Board will consider how to best fill the vacancy.  We invite you to join us in prayer on this matter.

We discussed the question that had been posed by some “are we a Vineyard church or not?”.  The genetic code from Vineyard USA is how we’re deciding whether we are or not.  Follow this link if you’d like to learn more about this code.  At this time, we feel this describes our church and have no plans on removing our affiliation from Vineyard.

http://www.vineyardusa.org/about/beliefs.aspx
(scroll to the bottom and click on Genetic Code)

We also discussed the issue of governance, and wanted to make sure everyone is aware that we believe this issue is resolved. Referring to the 8/25 update, we will continue with a goal of having both a strong senior pastor and a strong board in balance with each other.

We also plan to reinstate the usage of the deacon board. This group is in charge of maintenance and upkeep of the church properties. This role is crucial to ensuring our facilities stay nice and are well kept. We don’t believe this work should take either the senior pastor or the board away from their duties, and so this group will be reinstated.

We thought we’d start adding occasional questions to the updates, to get some dialogue coming from those church members who are reading this information. This week’s question is this: What do you believe is our church’s “special calling”? Please feel free to e-mail the board with your answers. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

That’s about it for this week. Next week, we’ll finish a best-guess timeline for search committee process and create a “critical path” timeline so we keep the process moving forward. As always, we appreciate your prayer for us and the church as we embark on this process. Have a great week.

August 28, 2007 - Notes on Prayer and Fasting / Spiritual Warfare

Prayer and Fasting

We are calling upon the church to make this time of transition a time of prayer and fasting. Pray for God’s best for South Metro during this interim time. Pray that nothing would impede us from connecting with the pastor God has in mind for us.

Fasting is like adding turbochargers to prayer. We invite you to join with us in fasting each Wednesday. Fasting can be abstaining from anything that is normal to your day. Make the effort and see what God does.

Spiritual Warfare

Spiritual warfare is part of the Christian life, and transition in the life of a church can be times of increased attack. The enemy would like nothing more than to divide and destroy the body of Christ.

We want you to be both aware of the enemy’s tactics, and capable of fending off any assault. That’s why we are providing the following studies on spiritual warfare created by the Vineyard in Columbus, Ohio. You may download them for use in your personal study, as a family, or as a small group.

Here are the topics (all files are in pdf format - get the free Adobe Reader here):

The Battle Begins: The Origin of Spiritual Warfare
Jesus and His Kingdom: Authority, Power, and Spiritual Warfare
Open Our Eyes: The Invisibility of Spiritual Warfare
Adversity and Accusation:  Weapons Used Against Us in Spiritual Warfare
Resisting Temptation: Jesus' Example in Spiritual Warfare
Praise and Worship: Weapons for Spiritual Warfare
The Armor of God: Weapons for Spiritual Warfare
Walking in the Light: Daily Victory in Spiritual Warfare

August 25, 2007 - Board Meeting Update

The board met on Wednesday, August 22 and the following is a quick recap on what we discussed:

Met with Jon & Sue Marsden (Area Vineyard Leader)

We met with Jon and Sue to discuss Chris’s leaving and what support they would be as our Area Leaders. They were extremely helpful in giving their opinions on Chris decision as well as what direction we should go from here. Many of you may already know this, but Jon & Sue were a part of the staff at our church in the past before going to River Heights Vineyard.

One subject of discussion was on church governance. Jon described the relationship between the board and the senior pastor as a delicate balance of leadership, where if one or the other become dominating in decision power, the church can be negatively affected. This description resonated well with our board, and although we’ll continue seeking to understand how other Vineyard Churches work, we plan to continue this form of governance as we move forward.

They also wanted to make it clear they had a real heart for our church and were willing to help anyway they could, including prayer, pastoral search support and even speaking to the congregation, if we wanted it. We plan to utilize their leadership and connections within the Vineyard community throughout our search.

Board Communication with the Church

Thanks to all those who have been sending the board their thoughts. We really appreciate your opinions and questions, and will be responding to each of you individually as these notes continue to come in. We spent quite a bit of time during our meeting discussing these letters, and found them very encouraging and helpful. For those of you who haven’t take advantage of this yet, please feel free to send us your questions and comments to our e-mail address: board@southmetrovineyard.org

We also decided the board will begin weekly small group conversations with church members who are interested in talking to us in a smaller group setting. These will occur between services in the fireside room starting September 9. Please come with your questions and ideas!

There were quite a few questions from the church about attending board meetings or getting the board notes from their meetings. The board meeting and their notes will not be open to the entire congregation due to some of the delicate/personal/private discussions that we have to engage in during these meetings. Discussions about staff performance or salaries, as well as delicate situations with our membership need to be kept discreet and confidential. However, we plan to utilize this area to post all pertinent information for our members to read. We have a passion for communicating to the congregation, and will almost always err on the side of over-communication.

As a side note, we determined that our e-mail and regular mailing lists are out-of-date. We will be updating these going forward. If you would like to have your most up-to-date information input into our system, please send changes to Beth.

Recordings of the Church Meeting on 8/19

If you are interested in getting a recording of the meeting from 8/19, please e-mail Beth Krzykowski and she will make sure you get one.

Staff Discussions

There were quite a few staff decisions that needed to be made with Greg, mainly regarding which staff member has which responsibilities. Nothing that would change what was already announced, but more around finalizing the pieces of our 90-day plan.

Next Week:

Next week we plan to dig into the search committee roles to begin the search process.

There were some questions about the role of the board in the church. To help answer these, we're posting the exact wording from our church
employee handbook.  Please let us know if you have any questions:

South Metro Vineyard
Church Board

The Church Board is the governing body of the Church.  It oversees the
affairs of the Church and provides prayer, advice, counsel and support
to the Senior Pastor regarding the life and the ministry of the Church.
The Church Board also provides personal prayer counsel, advice and support for the Senior Pastor and the paid staff.

a.      The Board meets with the Senior Pastor regularly (approximately one time per month), and receives reports from the Senior Pastor on the state of the Church.

b.      The Church Board is made up of 6 members who serve 3-year terms. The Board is comprised of the Senior Pastor, a President, Vice
President, Treasurer, and Secretary.

c.      The Board hires the Senior Pastor and performs his annual
review.  The Senior Pastor and supervisors under his direction, conduct the annual reviews of all paid staff members, and then provides those results to the Board.  The Board establishes salaries under the Senior Pastor's direction utilizing annual review information.

d.      The Church Board oversees the business being done by the church. It determines the annual church budget, and sets compensation levels. The Board may borrow money, incur indebtedness, and sign mortgages on behalf of the Church.

e.      The Church Board handles serious complaints brought by church members or paid staff, and is the final authority on all such issues.

f.      Former Board Members may form an Emeritus Board to be called in for situations such as New Building Programs, or in times necessitating critical thinking / praying. Prayer should be a primary focus in obtaining direction and leadership from the King of the Church, Jesus Christ.  Therefore, every member of the Board should be first and foremost people of devotion, worship and prayer as well as being committed givers to the South Metro Vineyard
Church.