Around The Table – Governing Board Report

Categories: Carillon Newsletter,Governing Board,News

At its April 17 meeting, the Governing Board approved revisions to the Governing Board Policy Book, many of which related to the new Church Bylaws.  The new Policy Book will be available in the Parish House Lounge for reference and added to the church website.

The Board made the following one-year appointments:

Memorial and Special Gifts Committee ~ Carol Jordan

Edwin Whitney Scholarship Committee ~ Charlene Knapp

We continue to seek candidates to serve as Alternate Wider Church Delegates to UCC Association and Conference as well as a Church Clerk.  If you are interested in serving and/or have questions, please contact Dick Roberts at 860-428-2172 or RCR1861@gmail.com.

The Board spent the bulk of the meeting in a discussion re. Policy Development/Speaking on Behalf of the Church.  SCC currently has no policy on this subject right now, but in light of some of the goals of the Just Peace Church initiative, this seems like a good time to take this on.

A “Governance by Policy” handout distributed by Pastor Matt reinforces the benefits of developing policies that are durable in their application to guide a variety of decisions – as contrasted to the methodology of treating every decision as a “one-of” decision for the specific situation only.  We then moved into a discussion about how we might develop a policy related to the topic of WHO can speak on behalf of the church and brainstormed some examples of when or how people might “speak on behalf of the church”:

  • Signage on property
  • Speaking to press as a spokesperson of the church
  • Speaking at a public event
  • Letter writing in public forum
  • Calling 911
  • Social media posting
  • Emailing under church name
  • Participation at a rally
  • Preaching (although for ministers there is a contractual call agreement that allows freedom of the pulpit.

We then come up with a list of questions that we should work to answer that could form a framework for a policy that included:

  • Who has authority to speak on behalf of the church? The Senior Minister?  A Senior Minister designee?
  • What topics or content would be acceptable for somebody to speak on behalf of the church
  • How would these topics be framed? Is there a subset of the church that must be engaged to be appropriate for public discussion?

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