Mission and Community Concerns Committee

Minutes of the March, 2008 Meeting

March 15, 2008

Mission and Community Concerns Committee of the Pilgrim Association of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ (MCCPAMACUCC?)

First, my apologies for taking so long to get back to all of you with the meeting minutes. I have too many things on my plate these days and some of them slide off now and then. But that’s not your fault.

Below are a few things we discussed at our last meeting, and some suggestions for the date of our next one.

Leadership Changes

First, as most of you know, I officially am no longer the chair of the committee. And I am officially no longer on the committee at all. Mary Pottle on the recruitment committee, was very clear that the rules say that I will have to resign. (Interestingly, someone else from the committee called the following day to ask if I had any recommendations for the committee because they were having trouble finding people who wanted to serve…). So this is an issue that we will have to discuss at our next meeting.

Actually my own time in the Pilgrim Association is up in the air, so we would probably have had to talk about succession issues fairly soon anyway, so this pushes the subject.

On the other hand, welcome to Peggy Files. She is the person who will replace me as member of the Missions Committee. Obviously she won’t move into being chair, but she takes my numerical spot on the committee, so give her a warm welcome. I know Peggy and she’s first rate.

The Heifer Challenge

I volunteered to do a flyer about Joe’s Association-Wide Heifer Project challenge and bring it to our Annual Meeting. I did that and the gathering voted to endorse the challenge. However, at that meeting and since then, several people asked me about the mechanics of the challenge, so we still need to come to some clarity about how it will work and we will need to start getting material about it into the hands of the various churches soon.

One of the things we need to decide now is the bookkeeping: how does the local church get credit for their donation with Heifer and also with us. We probably want to work out a way that they will send their money straight to Heifer, but inform us at the same time, and do it in such a way that the local church doesn’t feel burdened with a lot of extra paper work. For example, is there a way that we could talk to Heifer and they could just inform us every time a UCC church in our Association sends them money? This is something we need to make very clear, fairly soon. One person suggested that during the next year, when a local church writes a check to Heifer for a donation, have them put something like “Pilgrim Ark” on the memo line. It doesn’t matter if the church gives a specified amount of money or designates a particular animal (or animals), as long as they include the worlds “Pilgrim Ark” on it.

Lindsay said that we should tell the donors that we need them at the 2009 meeting for photos and coverage by the press. Dot added that we should send them all a nice invitation.

Equal Exchange tour

I mentioned at our last meeting that I had reported to the Exec. Committee that our committee had toured Equal Exchange and they were amazed. So, they said, how about setting up an Association-wide tour? So, we need to do that. We suggested October 3, about the time we went to Rutland last fall. We’ll need to discuss this further.

Evaluation of Missions Fair

Here are some of the comments we made in our evaluation. Keep them in mind for next year.

1. The Fair seems to be growing, so we probably need a larger building next time. Christ Church in Brockton was suggested.
2. The Map of Missions idea. It was a good idea, but we didn’t give people long enough to put things on it. Perhaps it could be at the center of all of the booths and have it available (with large and clear instructions) for people to put pins on during the entire day). Need a better cork board for the map. I thought our church had one, but I was mistaken and the project almost fell apart.
3. Food: plan on having extra for those who eat too much and/or show up unregistered.
4. Length of time: It didn’t seem long enough, especially with a meal in the middle. We suggested start at 11:00 (for registration, until 11:30) and ending at 2:30. I could see starting even earlier.

Meeting date for next time.

Always the hardest thing to discover.

Here are a few options. Get back to me as quickly as you can (unlike how quickly I got these minutes back to you), and let’s try to nail it down by the middle of next week.

Best possibilities are the Saturdays of May 24 or 31. For Peggy’s benefit, in case you have read this far, we usually meet on a Saturday at a restaurant on the Rockland/Abington line. There’s nothing fancy about it other than that it is relatively central and right off of the highway.

So drop me a line to let me know which (if either) of those works for you. And I’ll send a note back to all of you as soon as I hear from enough people.

Blessings on you all.

Stan