United Church of God, an International Association

Council of Elders Quarterly Meeting Report

Milford, Ohio

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Chairman Len Martin called the morning session to order at 9:04 a.m. Eastern, and the meeting was opened with prayer. Eleven Council of Elders (Council) members were present. Mario Seiglie joined at 9:25 a.m., after teaching an Ambassador Bible College class. Scott Ashley and Paul Wasilkoff joined by video conference.

Strategic Plan, Operation Plan, Budget Review—Strategic Planning and Finance Committee

John Miller began the presentation by explaining that a lot of energizing work went into the Strategic and Operation Plans that the committee will present and a lot of people contributed to them. The plans build on what has been done before and add to it.

The essence of what is before the Council came from a spontaneous moment in the August 2021 Council workshop during a discussion about Truth in Love. Truth in Love provides a roadmap to achieve the Church’s vision. The concept is simple enough that a child should understand it.

Turning the Page From Old to New: Aaron Dean said that adding scriptures to the plan would be beneficial to the entire Church. In the plan that is being presented, you will see the same plan in two different forms. The second layout is the recasting of the existing plan in a new light to help the Church to move ahead spiritually. It adds a spiritual scale alongside the existing physical elements. The new plan format will allow pastors to give sermons based on the strategic plan. We expect significant enhancements and modifications to the proposed format in the coming years.

In the presentation, he demonstrated that markers in the old format Operation Plan show where the same elements show up in the restructured plan.

Mapping the Path Toward Living the Vision: John Miller reminded the Council of the Church’s vision statement and the importance of mapping a path to fulfill that vision. This plan will provide more opportunities for more engagement at a local level so that every member can do their part. There is a lot of pent-up opportunity for people to get more involved.

Truth in Love Map: Aaron Dean said that everyone in the world lives somewhere on the Truth in Love map. God the Father and Jesus Christ live in the upper corner of the top quadrant. Others live throughout the other quadrants. We seek to move on the grid toward a goal to “Be Like Him.” If you are in the top quadrant, no matter where you are in that quadrant, you are okay.

We hope that all elders and members will be in a culture of truth in love. We want to practice servant leadership and make meaningful relationships, practicing truth in love to become more like our Father in heaven. We all want to live in that top quadrant, but there has to be a change in each of us to change the culture of the Church.

Assessing Teachings, Traditions, Organizational and Personal Performance: John Miller said that as Christians we are to examine ourselves and make assessments of our performance. We need to test all things and hold fast what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). He said that the map is an assessment tool that helps people to visualize a change that needs to be made. Two examples were shown of the Truth in Love Map applied to individual growth situations.

He also showed how the map works to assess organizational and program performance. We ask members to “examine themselves.” We as an organization should do the same.

The Ephesian Framework: Darris McNeely reviewed the rationale behind the creation of the current vision statement and how at this time, ten years later, we are returning to focus on the context of that statement in the book of Ephesians. He feels that God is leading us to lay down a framework from Ephesians for the work that we have been called to do. He played a video clip from the 2012 annual meeting of the General Conference of Elders, where Bill Eddington explained the vision statement which was adopted at that time.

When Paul was in Ephesus, the “word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed” (Acts:19:20). There are two vital pillars found throughout the first four chapters of Ephesians: unity of the Spirit and unity of the faith. The framework builds from the bottom. We begin with the concept of exhortation leading to conviction. People are exhorted to repent, to watch, to awaken, to study, to listen, to go and to do. That exhortation leads to a conviction, a belief in the gospel. They become convicted that something must be done.

This is followed by engagement that leads to commitment. Engagement involves the knowledge of salvation and why we are born. We engage them to make a commitment to truth which we seek to help them to understand.

The next focus is to equip the saints, to care for our disciples and to build the process of discipleship. The ministry is to equip the saints for works of service. This builds their courage through example so that they can be a good work and be a proper witness when called upon to do so.

The final focus is edification—being fitly framed together so that we can go on to perfection. This deepens someone’s conversion so that they can love the brethren and endure affliction. This all leads us to the strategic directives that tie this all together.

We should focus on Paul’s prayer in Ephesians:3:14-21. Can we pray this prayer and center on this as a part of our Ephesian framework to draw us together in a spirit of unity and power to accomplish the work of preaching the truth?

Strategic Directives: Brian Shaw said that it is important to understand the path that we are on; we must have the skill and ability to walk the path ahead. We pray to God to direct our paths.

In the Ephesian framework, we have identified strategic directives to move us from unity of the Spirit to unity of the faith for each of the major operations of the Church. In areas such as Organizational Stewardship, a shortcoming of the new format is that some of these directives come across as too broad, which leads to issues when trying to assign budget items to them.

Mr. Shaw explained each of the 12 strategic directives that were proposed by the committee, along with the scriptures that support them. These directives are the bridge that takes us to the operational level of the plan.

Operation Plan: John Miller introduced the framework of the newly proposed format for the Operation Plan. The chart should be read left to right, from the bottom up.

Dan Dowd showed the Operation Plan template and then showed a program level worksheet. On the Operation Plan template, there are scriptures tied to one or more operational initiatives. The left side of the program level worksheet has a program assessment; its top section shows an assessment of the current program position and its bottom section shows an estimated assessment of where the program would be at the end of the year. These plans are not intended to be used as a basis for “beating anyone up” when any of the anticipated metrics are not met.

The program level worksheets are not necessarily intended to be a part of the Operation Plan in future years; they are intended to give background for where the information comes from that appears in the Operation Plan itself.

Budget: Rick Shabi presented the proposed balanced budget for the next fiscal year that was prepared by the administration. The budget forecasts a revenue budget for 2022-2023 of $21 million. The budget ties into the Operation Plan. Mr. Shabi walked through the pages of the budget and highlighted some of the changes to the budgets by cost center.

The proposed budget includes additional ministerial trainees and pastoral hires.

Rick Shabi also distributed a capital budget for next fiscal year of $220,000 for equipment outside of the main budget. This is reflected in the main budget through the depreciation item in the home office area.

Questions: There were several questions regarding the process of developing the Strategic Plan, Operation Plan and Budget. It was decided that some details needed to be discussed in executive session. The Council went into executive session from 2:20 until 3:59 p.m. to discuss further.

Planning Update for 2022 GCE Annual Meeting—Charles Melear

Charles Melear sent a draft agenda to the Council with a number of scheduled activities that are finalized and other items that will be finalized during a GCE Planning Committee meeting next week. Mr. Melear shared the details of the events currently on the schedule.

Sabbath services will be 2–4 p.m. on May 14, 2022, at the Holiday Inn & Suites Cincinnati-Eastgate. The Holiday Inn was auctioned at the end of January and was bought by a new company, so there will be a little bit of transition and some upgrades are anticipated in future years.

Updated Logo Artwork for New Website Design—Peter Eddington

Peter Eddington displayed and reviewed the three logo options that had been discussed at length in Monday’s session, showing them in several display contexts. He then reviewed the text of a proposed resolution to use a new logo.

Paul Wasilkoff mentioned that he felt there was some similarity in the color palette with the Al Jazeera logo and that perhaps we could consider a slight color change.

The Council approved a resolution to adopt the “encircled flame/ribbon” logo which was the first option shown during Monday’s meeting.

Website Development Project Funding Resolution—Peter Eddington

Peter Eddington suggested that the funding strategy for the Website Development Project be formally accepted by resolution. He shared a number of documents, including the work order, consulting agreement and some project scope documentation.

The Council approved a resolution to spend the estimated funds for the project.

Strategic Plan, Operation Plan, Budget Review—John Miller

John Miller presented to the Council of Elders a copy of the old format plan that Peter Eddington had compiled. He proposed that the content of that document be put at the front of the plan document that will be sent to the General Conference for approval. After that point in the document, the new format plan will be inserted with a clearly visible watermark indicating that it is a future concept and not being balloted on at this time.

A number of pages will be removed from the concept plan, to save printing costs, but the three Operation Plan spreads will be included, plus the program level worksheet for the Feast of Tabernacles which was explained in the earlier session on Wednesday. A full version of the new format plan will be available online for elders to examine and review that contains all of the program level worksheets developed by the Strategic Planning and Finance committee.

Len Martin indicated that during Thursday’s meeting, as part of approving the Strategic Plan, Operation Plan and Budget, that the Council will make a resolution to direct the Strategic Planning and Finance committee to report to the Council each quarter their progress as they work forward with the administration to build out the new format.

The Council adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Chairman Len Martin called the morning session to order at 9:00 a.m. Eastern, and the meeting was opened with prayer. Eleven Council of Elders (Council) members were present. Paul Wasilkoff and Scott Ashley joined by video conference. Randy Stiver was unable to attend the day’s meetings.

The Council was in scheduled executive session until 12:47 p.m.

When open session resumed, it was reported that Appendix A of the Hebrew Calendar paper was approved by the Council during executive session.

Strategic Plan, Operation Plan and Budget Approval

Len Martin presented a resolution that was approved by the Council for additional work to continue on the Strategic Plan built around the Ephesians Framework. The resolution instructs the Strategic Planning and Finance Committee to continue the development of the Strategic Plan and to work closely with the administration as the administration develops an Operation Plan and Budget around the Ephesians Framework. Progress will be reported to the Council at each quarterly meeting.

The Council approved the Strategic Plan to be proposed to the General Conference.

The Council approved the Operation Plan to be proposed to the General Conference.

The Council approved the Budget to be proposed to the General Conference.

The Council adjourned at 1:22 p.m.

-end-

Interim Council Reporter

Chris Rowland

[These are not the official minutes from the Council meeting. Elders can find those at the home office with the Council Secretary. Video recordings are posted for the elders on the UCG Ministerial Resource Site.]

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