Emmanuel Lutheran Church Asheville

Report for Board of Directors Mtg., Dec 11, 2006

From: V. Scoones Re: Altar Guild 

The Altar Guild members participated in the "Cleaning Day" on November 18. 

Members of the Guild assembled the new Christmas tree and decorated it on the 9th of December. We all thank Mike Rush for donating the tree and Jim Reaves for Picking it up at Sam's Club. 

Thank you also for the Love Offering on November 5 At that time members of the Guild were installed.

 Congregational Profile (Revised)

The Mission and Outreach Committee met at 4:30 on this date. Martha Greene opened the meeting with prayer. 

Martha reported that the Outreach Singers had a full scheduled thanks to the efforts of Marie Baker. She has scheduled the group to sing at a different facility each month throughout 2007. They had recently sung at the Women's Correctional Facility in Black Mtn. The group had a large turnout and was very well received. They had also sung at the Western Carolina Rescue Mission in November. 

She also reported on the proposed Thanksgiving project. Doug Greene had made calls to ABCCM to get the names of families in need of assistance. The calls were not returned until the week before Thanksgiving which did not leave us adequate time to prepare. The committee decided to revisit the project next year. 

Lisa Baldwin reported on the progress being made with a possible DCE internship. She reported that $2,500 has been raised so far. Lisa stated that the congregational response has been very positive. She also reported that one of our retired pastors has agreed to supervise the intern provided that he is shown a job description. The committee discussed other requirements such as housing, salary and insurance. Lisa did point out that the salary would be half of what a DCE normally gets.

VBS was discussed. Marie Baker advised the committee that thus far no one has agreed to lead VBS this year. It is possible that we will not be able to have a VBS this summer. We had discussed inviting children from the Hispanic community to participate this year as an outreach initiative. 

The committee agreed we could not proceed with that, under the circumstances, at this time. The committee discussed the possibility of joining with another church and having a joint Bible School. Mike Rush suggested St. Mark's. Lisa will call them and report back at our next meeting. 

The next item discussed was Westfest. Pastor Wil reported that he had spoken with the leadership for the youth and the youth will help man the booth this year. Jon Burroughs will contact the West Asheville Business Assoc. and try to get information on this year's date. Mike Rush will speak to Luke Schmelzle about having the school represented at our booth. Westfest will be the focus of our next meeting. 

Mike Rush shared news from the BOD and explained what is going on with the Shepherding Program. The BOD is trying to correct the existing active church role. They are trying to weed out the names of those who are attending other churches or are no longer in the area. The committee discussed ways of doing things differently in the future to make the program run more smoothly and successfully. 

Pastor Wil advised that he had ordered the Bibles for the Visitor Packages. He had also ordered gift bags in lieu of the boxes as they were more cost effective. He and Jon advised that the 36 Hour Visitation Program could use some fine tuning. Jon asked if we could include some food, cookies or small loaves of banana bread for example. The committee will explore the feasibility of doing this. 

Marge Hansel reported that Minnie Hollar had approached her about the possibility of the committee getting together a Relay for Life Team. Cancer seems to be touching the lives of so many in our congregation. The committee agreed this would be a worthwhile project and will discuss it further at our next meeting. 

Lisa asked if we could explore putting up a better sign on Patton Ave.? The current sign hangs at the bottom of the Wilshire Park sign and is not very noticeable. New people to the area and out of town visitors have a hard time seeing it in the rapidly passing traffic. Jon will check with the Home Owners Assoc. for Wilshire Park and report back. 

There being no further business, Martha asked Jon to close the meeting with prayer. 

The next meeting will be at 3:30 on Sunday, March 11.

Respectfully submitted, 
Martha Greene