United Church of God, an International Association

Council of Elders Quarterly Meeting Report

Milford, Ohio

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

At 9:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time chairman Robin Webber called the quarterly meeting of the Council to order and asked deputy chairman Scott Ashley to open with prayer. Mr. Webber then read from the Psalms and spoke to the vision and mission of the United Church of God and the purpose of the meeting.

He asked for approval of the minutes of the last meeting and for agenda of the current meeting itself—both were approved. Then he outlined the reports to be given for the morning session and introduced Church president Victor Kubik for the initial administration report.

President’s Report—Victor Kubik

After greeting the Council Mr. Kubik commented on the positive bond and lack of tension among the administration and the Council that is such a hallmark of our present circumstance. Such peace and harmony is allowing us much needed time to focus on important items.

He outlined the function of the management team that has worked together for the last three years. The team has a seamless relationship that is so beneficial for rebuilding our processes over the past three years. He mentioned that the role of operations manager of Ministerial and Member Services (MMS) has not and will not be filled in the immediate future. Chris Rowland has been a big help administrating MMS along with Roy Holladay overseeing the manpower in the field ministry. Various ones of the management team oversee projects on behalf of the president from international oversight to leadership training to other functions.

We must have a strong priority to keep the peace within the body. We need to continue to monitor conditions and resolve situations that can cause division, and move forward together. Which is more important, our petty grievances or continuing to do God’s work? An old World War II motto in the U.S. shipyards was, "Loose lips sink ships." Likewise, loose lips that cause division can terribly damage the Church today. We need to seek peace and pursue it.

We must remember what Paul mentored Timothy to do: "Avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife" (2 Timothy:2:23But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.).

We also need to focus on our churches in the United States because they are what enable us to support the work of the Church in international areas. Outside of Australia, Canada, UK, Europe and Italy, MMS administers the other international regions.

Aaron Dean has been asked to help the president oversee some of the international areas administrated by the U.S. Starting with South Africa’s recent leadership training weekend, Randy Stiver is developing customized training programs for those international areas, except for some areas like East Africa, where John Elliott has already established a very effective program. Plans call for a trip in December to teach a customized curriculum of leadership training to the churches in Malawi and Zambia.

Ambassador Bible Center (ABC) is set to start this year with 40 or so students (depending on international visas)—the largest class since 2009. Resident faculty member Randy Stiver has moved his office downstairs to serve as dean of students.

The online pastoral training program coordinated by Don Ward and Ken Graham is working well beyond expectations. Our two present courses are pastoral care and biblical studies. The second year of the program is starting on Aug. 26. A certification of study will be presented at the end of each course. Such advanced study will benefit the congregations and will factor into pastoral compensation in the future.

We have a tremendous library of literature, but the problem is that we have not grown in membership. We must have a peaceful environment before we can expect growth, but we must also find ways to progressively engage those who learn about God’s truth through our efforts. Our present ladder of involvement from first contact to baptized member has some broken rungs on it. Call it "Operation Broken Rung," but we must fix that progression of engaging to teaching to converting those new who God is calling.

The several electronic e-mail newsletters we have had up until now (UCG, This Is the Way, and The Good News) have just been combined into just one: The Good News. It will have much more conversational tone, talking directly with the readers and building a positive relationship so they can feel comfortable and welcomed to move forward in God’s truth.

We are striving to build and maintain good relations with other organizations of the greater Church of God. Reading from a letter from Church of God, Ministries International, thanking UCG for jointly producing the Feast of Tabernacles in Tobago, he cited their enthusiasm and appreciation for sharing the Feast with UCG. We also received a letter of invitation to attend the 150th anniversary of the Church of God, Seventh Day, which he could not attend in July, but plans to visit their central office in Omaha, Nebraska, after our area ministerial conference in Colorado this month.

We are also working to also have more visible and positive organizational relations with the business neighborhood of home office and the Holiday Inn that we use for the General Conference of Elders and the Feast of Tabernacles in Cincinnati.

When Mr. Kubik concluded his report, Mr. Webber took the floor and introduced Church treasurer Aaron Dean for the financial report.

Financial Report—Aaron Dean

We finished the fiscal year with a total income of $17.6 million. We are actually budgeting below our actual income in the process of rebuilding our cash reserves. We’re cautiously watching to see what effect the reduction of The Good News subscription list will have on income. We’ve been receiving $2 million per annum from coworkers who receive the magazine.

Mr. Dean expressed great appreciation for the various home office employees and local members who have saved the Church considerably by helping with maintenance and improvements to the home office building and grounds.

Media and Communications Report—Peter Eddington

Of particular interest is that other church organizations (not Church of God) are increasingly requesting bulk literature for their educational programs. Some are even using our booklets to move their congregations toward keeping the Sabbath. He distributed a handout citing numerous requests. All bulk requests are personally reviewed to verify that the literature is going to be used for a direct educational purpose. The frequency of these requests has gone from several per year to several every week.

Additionally, requests for a location of our local church services are now nearly all from non-members and mostly by "snail mail," showing that print literature continues to trigger responses, more than e-mailed responses to Web searches of our literature.

Our Web search ranking continues to increase and is now 13th among Christian denomination websites.

The Beyond Today set had been altered to allow the presenters to stand and deliver the program content. The standing delivery fosters better posture and more natural gestures. An upcoming program will cover the horsemen of Revelation and offer a limited run (5,000 copies) brochure followed by electronic downloads only. A similar brochure will be featured on another upcoming program about overcoming Internet pornography addiction in the near future.

Mr. Eddington then presented a chart that shows how the media-generated income (including members who have come from our media efforts) consistently outpaces our media budget. He noted that the more spent on media, the more income we receive from donors, coworkers and new, media-generated members. He recommends restoring the funding cut from the budget to media as early as possible. He also commented that Internet coverage does not motivate donations as much as print, because people primarily expect the Internet to be free. Donors to the work come mostly from having print magazines and letters in hand.

Council Committee Reports

Strategic Planning and Finance Committee Report—Bill Bradford

The committee is pleased to report that the Church has finished the fiscal year with a balanced budget thanks to the generosity of our faithful tithe payers and an inspiring response to our special offering request some months ago. To better manage our outgo we have also adopted a cost-capped healthcare program for Church employees and appreciate the administration’s efforts in that regard.

He cited the need to begin to increase our media output to maintain momentum in generating new donors and coworkers. The Committee recommends that we continue operating just under the level of the full reserve for the remainder of this year. We look forward to a year of building.

Doctrine Committee Report—John Elliott

The committee operates on a three-point approach: Why, What and How. We seek to know what Jesus Christ taught—that’s why we believe what we believe. What is the determination of what level of involvement is needed regarding a doctrinal issue: pastoral, Doctrine Committee or the General Conference of Elders. Most issues are dealt with on the first two levels. It is vital that we believe, teach and practice what the Bible says. However we must be cautious about trying to say or teach what the Bible does not say.

He explained the value, process-wise, of the doctrinal study about how often unleavened bread should be eaten during the Days of Unleavened Bread. It helped us refine the process of doctrinal review and of how to approach the Scriptures in what they say or don’t say.

How—which entails the processes of the committee’s work—begins with the document for submitting written requests for doctrinal review of a doctrinal issue. The committee currently has 27 projects on its review list. It has two subcommittees: the Doctrine Advisory Committee and the Prophecy Advisory Committee, to aid in the review and assessment process. The six-member (fully half of the Council and the maximum size of a Council committee), main Doctrine Committee is working on nine projects, and the sub-committees are working on an additional seven.

Media Committee Report—Scott Ashley

At the moment there is nothing on the docket for the committee, so the first meeting it held since May was just yesterday. Historically, the Media Committee has not always existed on the Council. The committee did discuss the process of review teams for our various media efforts. They also discussed the popularity of audio books and noted that the media department already had four booklets recorded in mp3 format, with all booklets to eventually be recorded and made available as mp3 downloads on our website.

Roles and Rules Committee—Roc Corbett

The duty of the Roles and Rules Committee is to monitor the inner, interconnected processes of functionality of the Council, General Conference of Elders and the Church—much like the inner workings of a fine watch—and make sure those procedures and processes are sound and efficient.

A careful discussion about Bylaws Article 9.2 regarding replacement of a member of the management team will be brought to the Council for clarification. The Committee is also in the process of pulling together a library of governing documents information and Council precedents as a resource to help the Council and its committees in their work. They will also request repopulating the Amendment Committee of the GCE.

Several large projects on the horizon will be presented to the Council, and the committee will carefully process whatever the Council remands to it.

Ethics Committee—Mario Seiglie

As we have had more peace in the Church—as Mr. Kubik has commented—the committee has less to review. However, in its most recent meeting the committee reviewed two items regarding GCE Forum monitor selection and a member appeal.

Education Committee—Rex Sexton

Almost everything we do in the Church is about education. We educate the public about God’s truth and educate ourselves about greater depths of the truth. The duty of the committee is to review and assess the education programs of the Church, which the committee did briefly during its meeting. The committee is seeking to update its bullet-point list of all the educational efforts of the Church that they need to monitor, and asked the Council for any such updates.

With the Council committee reports completed, chairman Webber asked Rainer Salomaa to deliver a closing prayer and blessing on the noon meal. The Council then adjourned to have its annual group picture taken, followed by a healthy lunch with other home office employees.

Afternoon Session

Chairman Webber called the afternoon session to order and asked Mark Mickelson to deliver the opening prayer for God’s blessing and direction on the Council’s discussion and deliberation. He then gave the floor to the chairman of the Roles and Rules Committee.

Roles and Rules Discussion—Roc Corbett

There are times specified in the bylaws that the Council is required to interpret the application of particular bylaws. In this case, the Council needs to rule on how to conduct a ballot for an operations manager according to Bylaws Article 9.2, which states, "Upon a two-thirds (2/3) secret ballot…" an operations manager can be approved to serve. The question is whether this means only a single yes-or-no ballot, or if it means that multiple rounds of balloting may take place to make that selection.

Article 9.2 is similar to Article 8.2.1, which deals with selection of the Council chairman and allows multiple ballots to be taken, and likewise Article 8.2.2 allows for multiple ballots for selecting the deputy chairman.

The purpose of the discussion was for the Council to fully agree on their interpretation so that going forward the Council could apply the regulation consistently. President Kubik pointed out that normally only one name is being brought forward for the Council to decide rather than two or three when a Council chairman is being selected. Dr. Ward pointed out that this not only deals with present or future circumstances, but with historical situations in the Church. Aaron Dean commented that abstentions could also be used to deadlock a decision with the single ballot interpretation.

Mr. Corbett returned the floor to Mr. Webber, who summarized the discussion in preparation for an executive session, which the Council then entered at 1:30 p.m.

-end-

Randy Stiver

Council Reporter

© 2013 United Church of God, an International Association