Council of Elders Meeting

United Church of God, an International Association

Milford, Ohio

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Chairman Robin Webber called the open afternoon session to order at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The morning had been spent in an executive session to allow president Victor Kubik to have a private discussion with the Council regarding personnel matters related to budget that would be reviewed in the coming afternoon. After the opening prayer by Rex Sexton, Mr. Webber presented Peter Eddington to project the Strategic and Operation Plans for the Council to review and edit as need be in group discussion.

Strategic Plan Discussion—Peter Eddington

The first section for discussion, the Guiding Principles, generated no editing suggestions from the Council, nor did the Positioning Statements.

Next Mr. Eddington projected onto the video screen the goals of Media and Communications Services for discussion, and Mark Mickelson suggested that their goals should be updated to reflect reality at this point in time. Bill Bradford asked about doing analysis as to why we didn’t reach our goals. Mr. Eddington said that we did analyze the goals and why we had not reached them—mostly due to realigning the budget to match financial realities of recent date.. He added that these goals were drafted when we had a $6 million media budget, which is now $4.1 million.

One goal that was revised changed the Kingdom of God Bible Seminar schedule to reflect plans for public appearance campaigns over the next three years. Also, since the Bible Reading Program (BRP) is on hold due to employee workload and because of needing an upgrade for a new web interface (which cannot be developed until the upcoming ucg.org upgrade is done). However staff are continuing to gather the research for the New Testament component of the BRP.

Moving to the Organizational Administration section of the Strategic Plan, Mr. Webber asked if the Council was unwittingly giving itself a subjective grade rather than a neutral statement by the stated wording under Objectives: “The administration desires to build upon the current high level of unity and satisfaction.” Mr. Mickelson commented that although we have a high level of unity, commitment and sacrifice, the Council has heard from some field ministry that a level of stress, frustration and dissatisfaction does exist. The sentence was then edited to read: “…desires to address any areas of dissatisfaction and build on the current high level of unity.”

John Elliott reflected that the realignment of employee work expenses and benefits made necessary three years ago by the adverse subdivision of the Church seem to now be the new “normal,” and that now the field ministry are hearing that they must continue to cut budgets and increase workloads. Thus the strategies need to reflect actually fixing the sacrificial budget and workload. Roc Corbett suggested that we need return to the prayer for Christ to add more laborers to the harvest and more “fish” to feed the thousands—that prayer must be a primary strategy. The strategy pertaining to this was then reworded to: “Whenever able, provide appropriate benefits and compensation with manageable workload for each employee.”

Next “Congregational Care” was discussed. Roy Holladay pointed out that Ministerial and Member Services has now nine instead of 11 areas of responsibility since Women’s Services and Good Works are now directly administered by the president’s office. He also agreed to the above assessment that we have too heavy workloads for many in the field ministry, which needs adjustment when we are able.

Budget Planning for 2014-2015—Bill Bradford

After introducing this section of the Council meeting, Mr. Bradford gave some background on the development of the proposed budget, which has been produced by the administration and treasurer Rick Shabi for the Council.

The proposed change for the 2014-2015 budget is $245,880 more than last fiscal year’s budget. Basically, the budget is holding the line similar to last year.

Rex Sexton observed that the new budget reflects a 1.017 percent increase. He hopes that the income will go up at least several more percentage points and asked if there was a plan to spend any additional increase.

Regarding public proclamation, Mr. Eddington explained that the increased costs from media have to do with increased printing and postage costs, plus continually greater demand internationally for our literature. He clarified several other points asked by various Council members.

Roy Holladay reviewed the MMS budget, which features a ministerial trainee, three retirements and three new hires. Several clarifying questions were asked and then answered by Mr. Holladay, Chris Rowland or Mr. Shabi.

Other cost centers were systematically reviewed with relevant questions for clarification. Mr. Bradford asked Mr. Shabi to review the cost center for the home office. A notable difference in employee wages was caused by reallocating several salaries to other areas. The item called executive reserve is a fund to use for critical equipment replacement and other urgent needs that had not been budgeted for elsewhere.

To explain the Legacy Cost Center Mr. Bradford asked Mr. Rowland to take the floor. He pointed out that the three retirements scheduled for the coming year were listed, but otherwise the budget was self-explanatory.

After the budget review Mr. Webber asked for a motion to enter executive session. The Council so moved to do so after a short break.

Following an evening executive session after dinner, the Council ended the day about 8 p.m.

-end-

Randy Stiver

Council Reporter

© 2014 United Church of God, an International Association