Thinking Outside of the Box and Inside the Cross

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review and Proceedings

 

Introduction

This document is intended to serve two purposes:

o            To provide a recap for conference attendees, who will most likely be particularly interested in the follow-up items

o            To provide an overview for those who were unable to attend.

As a result, some of the information in these proceedings may not be of direct interest to every reader. The Executive Summary is intended to provide an overview that will be useful to all. The reader should then choose the sections and Appendixes that are of interest based on his/her role.

Executive Summary

Background

The Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Resurrection held its first Parish Leadership Conference on Saturday, March 24, 2007. The goal of this conference was to bring leaders from the community together for a day to set priorities and objectives for the remainder of the year, as well as to discuss aspects of how to work more effectively. An invitation was sent out initially to all members of the Parish Council, Parish Council committees (both standing comities and currently active ad-hoc committees), Past Presidents and Philoptochos Board members. A general invitation to the community was sent out subsequently.

Twenty-seven members of the community attended the conference as participants, and five GOYA members provided administrative assistance.

Conclusions

At a high level, the conclusions were quite simple. Virtually all of the breakout sessions converged on three themes:

o            Expand our membership

o            Expand our leadership

o            Improve communications

A review of the Proceedings that follow, with particular emphasis on the Breakout Sessions and wrap-up, will provide significant detail.

Feedback

An on-line poll was conducted following the Conference. All Participants were asked to answer a set of questions about the day. At a high level, the results indicated a very successful conference:

o            92% of responses indicated a Productive or Extremely Productive Day

o            100% indicated that they had a chance to participate

o            83% indicated that the level of participation was high

 

Conference Materials

Letters

Appendix A contains correspondence sent prior to the conference and/or distributed during the conference. These may help to provide some additional insight into the objectives and format of the day.

Reference Materials

Appendix B of this document contains two articles that were provided to attendees for background reading.

Follow-ups

The following list itemizes specific follow-up items were discussed at the conference. It is expected that other items may surface in the course of executing these tasks. The first item, not specifically discussed at the conference, was added as a direct result of this.

For any items where there is no Responsible Party listed, it is the responsibility of the Executive Committee to identify such a person.

Short Description	Long Description	Responsible	Due Date	Notes
PC / Committee Communication	News does not always flow properly between Parish Council and the various committees. A recommendation will be made on how to communicate most effectively. This will, at the minimum, be published guidelines, but may also include formalized procedures related to Parish Council and/or Executive Committee meetings.	Executive Committee	15-Apr	This was discussed at Executive Board meeting of 16-Apr. Guidelines will be published for committees to contact President directly who may then refer committee to another PC member. For facilities issues, the on-line request tracking system should be used.
Youth Listserver	In order to improve communication between Youth Groups, we will create a specific Listserver for the Youth Groups. This will enable e-mails to be sent to members of all youth groups, without flooding each family with duplicates. if they have children in multiple groups.	J. Gabriel	15-Apr	Setup completed on 27-Mar. Guidelines and Instructions were published on 14-Apr.
Youth on-line community	Participants suggested an on-line community (something like “myspace”) for our Youth. It was agreed that this was a good concept, but we want to ensure that the community can be secured.	J. Gabriel	30-Apr	Due to concerns about security and ability to provide proper oversight, this item will be deferred or rejected.
Strategic Planning Structure	The Strategic Planning Committee recommended that they exist as an autonomous body that does not formally report into the Parish Council. This requires further discussion as the Parish Council had previously approved a standing committee on Strategic Planning and, as per Uniform Parish Regulations, all standing committees report into the PC.	Parish Council & Past Presidents	N/A	The Past Presidents will meet regularly and report back to the Executive Committee, as provided for in the by-laws. The questions about the specific structure and purpose of this committee have in turn spawned a discussion regarding the process for establishing both standing and ad-hoc committees. The by-law committee and Parish Council will continue to review. The Strategic Planning Committee may cease to exist as a formal committee, but the role of the past presidents is not expected to change significantly.
Junior Choir	Organize a Junior Choir. This includes, at a minimum, identifying a director, coordinating with Sunday School and with Church Choir.	TBD	Fall 2007	The specific date was not discussed, but the target date is intended to have us prepared by the next school year.
Youth Orientation	Schedule a fall youth orientation program for all parents, youth advisors, and liaisons from other church groups	Youth Commission	Fall 2007	More details in the Youth Commission Breakout Section.
Identify YAL Coordinator	The parish has made attempts in the past to begin a YAL group. In order to do so successfully, we must identify a coordinator, who can then work with the Youth Commission and National YAL to kick off an effective program.	Fr. Emmanuel, Vivian Casil, Jim Gabriel	June 2007
Standing Welcoming Committee	A standing Welcoming Committee should be established. Rather than rotate greeters every week, a consistent group (that could rotate within itself, but over a relatively short interval) would take more responsibility and be better focused.	Membership Development Committee	TBD
Develop Welcome Package .	The committee should establish standard follow-up procedures for information received from prospective new members. Currently, visitors who fill out cards at the pangari have their names sent to the office. They then receive a Fair Share packet and go onto our mailing list, but we need to develop an approach that provides more of a personal touch.	Membership Development Committee	May 2007
Provide better accessibility to leadership for new parishioners	We should look into the installation of a glass-enclosed directory board to include both photographs and contact information. This was in response to the sentiment that visitors and prospective members don’t have a good sense of who to contact about what. We want the leadership to appear more accessible	Membership Development Committee with Facilities Committee	TBD

 

 

 

Proceedings

Welcoming Remarks

Father Emmanuel Gratsias

Father Manny began by leading us in a prayer service, which included the Gospel Lesson from Matthew about the Parable of the Talents.

The Lord said this parable: "A man going on a journey called his servants and entrusted to them his property; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them; and he made five talents more. So also, he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, 'Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.' And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, 'Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.' He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master answered him, 'You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

Following the service, Father Emmanuel addressed the group, referring to the Gospel Lesson. The text, as transcribed below, is taken from the conference video. Please bear in mind that grammar, punctuation, etc. as displayed below are not from an original written document but from the transcriber’s interpretation of Fr. Emmanuel’s address.

The Gospel lesson represents the gifts that God gives us and challenges us as to what we do with them. I often use this example: if I give you a box, a beautiful gift box wrapped in a nice ribbon; and if I spend $10,000 on that gift and you never unwrap it, it absolutely has no value to you whatsoever. You have to use the gift so that it will have value. If it’s a typical material gift it will probably be wearing out after 5, 10, 15 years and end up in a flea market. If it’s a spiritual gift, a gift of God, such as faith, hope and love - St. Paul said the spiritual gifts are Faith Hope and Love – then they last forever. Spiritual gifts are divine attributes that work within us. If I unwrap the gift box and find spiritual gifts, and I use them and really work at them, then guess what? They become better. If you live Faith, you become more faithful. If you show hope, you become more hopeful. If you manifest love you become more loving. Spiritual gifts don’t wear out as you use them. They become better. They grow. They become very, very valuable indeed.

So, all of use have been given certain capabilities and gifts. And we think of ourselves as the leadership of the parish. That is exactly right to do that. Well, we’ve been given a gift and we need to be like those in the Gospel Lesson that used the gifts and made them grow. We can’t turn around and say “He gave this to me but I’m not going to make an effort. I’m going to bury it in the ground and not make an effort. I’m not going to unwrap this gift and use it.” Well, the moment we do that we become the one that had the one talent, buried it, and the Lord said “Forget It” (in one form or another). We must be like one with 5 talents, take those gifts and say, “Whatever the Lord has given me that I can use in the mission of the church, I’ve got to use it. I’m obligated.” The Scripture says we’re obligated to use our talents, our capabilities, our spiritual gifts in the service of the church, either here today or in whatever way we’re going to do it in the future.

That’s why we’re here today. Somebody might say, “Oh, another committee, another organizational function type of thing.” Let me tell you something. (And you’ll read about some of this in the Easter letter that’s getting finished today). The first church, the primitive church in Jerusalem, had what we might call a soup kitchen – they were serving food to the widows and the orphans. And the Apostles themselves, the twelve, were sitting there making sure that the poor of Jerusalem were getting fed, because they were responding to the word of Christ: that’s what they were doing: they were putting food on the tables. You can read about this in the Acts of the Apostles, right in the early chapters. It says, “the Apostles stated that we don’t have time to go out and preach; we’re supposed to be spreading the word of God. But we are taking care of the tables. And in one form or another they said, “We need a committee.” Yes – the Church started out with committees. The committee (they didn’t call it a committee; that’s our word) but what they did – they chose seven servers. The Greek word for that kind of service is Diakonia – the one who serves is Diakos - the deacons, and that’s where we got the order of Deacons.

The first of the seven was Stephen, who later on turned out to be the first martyr. And they were ordained to serve. The Apostles laid their hands upon the deacons’ heads and prayed over them. They were consecrated into the service of the church. And they served the widows and orphans.

Oh, all this because there were complaints. Because this set of orphans was getting more food than the other widows and orphans. They had that kind of complaint. See, there was a conflict. And they’re sitting there, the twelve apostles, saying, “What are we doing? We’re supposed to be out there preaching, not serving, not settling this table problem.” And they had to organize. And that's where we get the Order of Deacons from. They serve. Did you ever notice, when a deacon’s here, he serves the bishop; he serves everyone. That’s where it started. The church right away realized that sometimes we have to come up with committees. We have to respond to problems in an organizational manner.

The Apostolic council of 51 AD: major issues facing the church about how to deliver the message and to whom and who was eligible to receive it. We’d better have a major conference, said St. Paul and the Apostles. Whatever Apostles were in Jerusalem met with St. Paul and they settled that problem. Read about that in Acts, also.

So, we’re here today. Don’t think of this as “Oh, another committee or some other thing I’ve got to do.” Being here today is a very spiritual act. What we’re doing today is really using the capabilities that God gave us and we’re just training ourselves and learning how to do it better. I hope this is the first of many of conferences, because when other people hear how well we did this, and that we all walked out with an extra idea, a plus, and then future conferences will work successfully more and more.

So, let me tell you something. Think of your presence today as sacred ministry. I’m not here for a committee meeting. When they appointed the deacons to take care of the widows and the orphans they never thought of it separate from the ministry of the church. They considered that an important part of the ministry of the church. So, today, we are here for a very sacred and holy ministry. God is telling us with this Gospel lesson that if we have been given a gift that can be used in the ministry of the church, we need to do it. So, God Bless Us All, you, me and all of us. I’m hoping to pick up ideas today. I’m sure we all will. I turn it over to Jim Gabriel – God Bless you and thanks for organizing this.

Jim Gabriel

The following text was the draft prepared by Parish Council President Jim Gabriel. It may vary slightly from his actual remarks.

Welcome to our first Annual Parish Leadership Conference. It is truly invigorating and exciting to see everybody assembled here this morning.

In fact, this is a very exciting day for numerous reasons. To name a few:

I’m excited to see how many members of this parish are ready to invest a day of their time for the good of the community. If we consider the nucleus of our parish leadership assembled here today, along with a few others who wanted to be here today but were not able to attend, we can all be both excited and proud to be a member of this family.

However, as most people here know, we always need more volunteers, and I’m excited because I think that today will help us build up our base of active parishioners.

It’s exciting because we don’t often get a chance to spend a full day with one another (7 hour bus rides to GOYA ski trips don’t count). If we get nothing out of today other than getting to know one another better, it will have been worthwhile for us personally and for our ability to work together going forward.

It’s exciting because I think that we can come out of today with a solid list of priorities and objectives for this year. With such a list, we can (a) further the progress of our community, (b) be better prepared to communicate our plans to the rest of the community and (back to my previous point) get our fellow parishioners excited and thereby involved.

It’s exciting because it’s something new for us. (I had to get this one in because I won’t be able to use it again next year)

Well, that sounds like enough excitement for one day. I’ll move on now.

Why are we all here? Why do we need this day? What do we hope to accomplish?

We have been spending the last 10+ years preparing to move to our new home. It was an amazing period of time full of very hard work by very many people. Every time we drove past the corner of Route 107 and 25A we could not help but to feel very excited about what lay ahead.

Then we moved in. Beautiful day – lots of emotions – tears, smiles, hugs – an amazing day. It been almost two years now, but I suspect that every one of us still cannot help but to remember that day with wonder, and to continue to marvel at the beauty of our home. (By the way, If you haven’t looked up at our dome at night and seen the light reflecting through the windows, you must do so.)

So here we are. We have so much to be thankful for, and so much to look forward to. However, I also suspect that we don’t have nearly as strong an idea of “what’s next” as we did when we were watching the building rise.

So, what is next? Well, I imagine we all agree that as a fundamental goal, we want to expand our ministry. That’s why we moved here, right? Because we couldn’t do everything that we wanted do in 34 Cedar Swamp Road.

But that’s a broad statement. How do we give ourselves more tangible goals? What ministries? With what short term objectives? With what more specific longer term goals? What is the best structure to let us get there?

I know – I’m asking a lot of questions. Don’t worry – I’ll also try to supply some answers. But more importantly, we’re here today to help answer some of those questions too. We need this day, because if we don’t answer those questions, we won’t be able to move forward.

So, allow me to spend a little bit of time on structure. How do we need to structure ourselves to be most effective? Understanding this is a key prerequisite to understanding our task for today.

Let’s start with the Parish Council. It’s the governing body of the church according to our by-laws, not to mention the fact that virtually every committee within the parish is either a standing or ad-hoc committee of the Parish Council, so it seems as good as place as any to start. The Council, 15 parishioners plus Father Manny, meets once a month and the Executive Board, five Parish Council officers, meets once a month. Great structure for an advisory board – not much good for a working group. Issues require follow-up and turnaround in much shorter intervals than that. Maybe we could get away with this when we were a small parish, but it began to stretch us thin even for the last few years in Glen Cove. So traditionally, with a few exceptions, the Parish Council has served as both an advisory committee and a group of working committees. Still not very effective. 15 people cannot do the work of the entire parish.

Please don’t take my comments to suggest that the work of the parish is limited to the Council. We have long standing committees, such as the Youth Committee and the Greek School Board & PTA that have been doing a ton of work for many years. We have the Philoptochos, an independent Organization that has been doing the same. But we need to extend that model. To make it the norm, not the exception

This year, we already have a few examples of ad-hoc committees that have done wonders: The now-famous basement committee was driven to accomplish something and did they ever. Stella, Cliff, Nickie and Tony have set a standard that I hope the rest of us can match. Now we have the chair committee. Nickie Demos, Mike Kranyak, Anne Vandoros, Irene Alatzas and Constance Denslow are working hard to provide the Parish Council with a recommendation by next month for seats to replace our beautiful antique priceless folding chairs. (But don’t worry, for those of you who’ve grown attached to our current chairs, we’ll make them available for purchase.)

But we must do three things (maybe more):

We must extend the committee model to supply the same effective concept to many other areas: We’ve begun with the Facilities Committee, but we can’t stop there. We have Membership Development, Strategic Planning, Finance, Information & Outreach, just to name a few.

We need to set clear objectives for our committees and for our parish as a whole. Every one of our committees has an idea of what it’s goal is – but do we have specific objectives for this year? For the next two years? As critical as I believe this to be, I’m not going to dwell on it now, because we have about 4 hours of our agenda devoted just to this area. Alex will kick it of at 10:30 and I don’t want to steal his thunder. However, I want to make two quick points: (1) Today’s breakout sessions are not meant to be committee meetings – please allow your facilitators to set the agenda for these sessions. (a) The effort we are undertaking today applies to every committee of the church. If we tried to focus on every committee today, we’d be here through Palm Sunday. We’ve picked four that we think will generate the most interest. That does not mean the ones we’ve omitted are any less importand. I encourage, in fact I urge, the chair of every other committee to follow our example and do the same type of exercise for his/her committee in the near future.

Finally, we must improve communications between the committees and the council. I’m going to dwell on this for a few minutes because it’s important, and because it’s not directly addressed by today’s agenda. Our organizations and committees today do not always know what each other are doing. At times that can lead to duplication of work. At other times, it can lead to things falling through the cracks. It can also lead to misunderstandings which can develop into mistrust. I’m glad to say that worst case is the exception and not the rule around here, but I’m sure we can all think of one or two examples. If we do not improve our communications we will not work effectively. But even more importantly, if we do not improve our communications, we are likely to suffer as individuals. We are all parts of one common body. How would we do in day to day life if our arms, legs, mouths, heart and lungs were working totally independently? (Is there a doctor in the house?) Furthermore, if we do succeed in our goal of expanding the work done by committees, communication will become even more important.

I am confident that if we are successful in these three tasks: Extending the model, improving communication, and setting priorities and objectives, we can accomplish great things. On top of that, I think in the past we have invited non-Parish Council members onto committees, but we’ve then had 1 or 2 meetings and provided no motivation and no means for these folks to dig in their heels and get involved. So if we are really able to make our committees work, I firmly believe that it will provide motivation for others to get involved. As I said earlier, there are exceptions, but we need to make today’s exception into tomorrow’s norm.

So, why is this day exciting? Because if we accomplish these goals, I think we can jump start 2007 and beyond.

It may require some thinking outside the box. I’d like to ask everyone to be creative. During our breakout sessions, don’t be afraid to suggest anything – we’re all here to listen and brainstorm. I suspect only two people in this room will recognize the lyric “I ain’t often right but I have never been wrong.” Bear that in mind when you’re in these sessions. Nothing anyone says is “wrong” today. Any if someone knocks down your crazy suggestion, don’t take it personally. Don’t take anything personally. We’re all here to move forward together. Let’s start with the following as a given: We are all here because we love our church and we love our community. We are all here because each and every one of us wants to help. Let’s bear that in mind too as we enter into potentially lively debates.

Thank you all again for being part of this day.

Team Building Exercise

Purpose

All conference participants participated in a team building exercise. The purpose of the exercise was to highlight the importance of communication and teamwork. It was based on the Toxic Waste exercise used at corporate and school events (e.g. http://wilderdom.com/games/descriptions/ToxicWaste.html). The exercise was modified to relate directly to our parish and was dubbed “Toxic Loukoumades.” At a high level, the structure was a follows:

o            The team was given a task: Using ropes and bungee cords, team members had to manipulate two buckets that were placed in the center of a circle with a diameter of approximately 15 feet.

o            One bucket, full of plastic balls, had to be emptied into the other, which was empty.

o            Three teams were used to perform this exercise:

o            The “Parish Council” team was given a complete description of the problem and charged with formulating a plan and giving it to the team of “Committee Heads”

o            The “Committee Head” team had to relate the instructions to the “Committee Members” who were given minimal information. This team was also expected to communicate issues and questions back to the “Parish Council”

o            The “Committee Members” were blindfolded and given instructions and guidance by the “Committee Heads”

o            Due to the number of participants, two separate groups performed the exercise, each consisting of the three teams listed above.

Wrap-up

It was a most interesting hour. For about the first 20 minutes, both the Committee Heads and Committee Members teams sat waiting for instructions. The Parish Council teams, reading the instructions, questioned the sanity of the conference organizers. The GOYA members assisting with Conference administration looked on with glee. Eventually, Committee Head team members, having received their instructions, started coming downstairs to inspect the “Toxic Loukoumades sites” and provided feedback to the Parish Council members. After another 10-15 minutes, they began to provide instructions to their blindfolded Committee Members team members.

Once the actual attempts at manipulating the balls and buckets got underway, communication seemed to break down entirely. Everyone had his/her own idea and expressed it. (In one case, one of the blindfolded team members began to give instructions to those who could see.) The ideas ranged from slinging bungee cords over pipes to changing the diameter of the Toxic Circle by pushing the rope towards the buckets. Group A claimed success first. Group B eventually did the same, but only after knocking over the bucket of loukoumades and contaminating the entire Fellowship Hall.

So what lessons were learned?

o            Communication between Parish Council and Committees is not clear.

§              It is not well organized

§              It is rarely bi-directional

o            Individuals and groups alike often assume that all others have the same information they do, which is rarely the case. This can exacerbate the communication difficulties.

o            Those people doing the actual work in real parish activities don’t always receive enough information and definitely feel as though they are blind.

Introduction of Committees

Alex Ipiotis, chair of the Facilities Committee, introduced the concept and objectives of the Parish Council committee structure. He read the following comments, not necessarily verbatim, They may vary slightly from his actual remarks:

 

Review of Current By-laws section on Standing Committees:

Some exist; some don’t and maybe never have.

Provide examples of successful committees

§       Festival

§       Fund raising for the new church

§       Construction committee

§       youth commission

§       Greek school

§       The basement committee (This one is interesting because it is an ad-hoc committee)

§       Facilities management

§       Additional committees

§       Chair selection (another ad-hoc committee)

§       By-Laws Maintenance

§       Capital Fundraising

§       Finance

§       Information and outreach

§       Membership development

§       Strategic planning

§       Worship and Parish life

Imagine trying to get the work of these committees accomplished within the timeframe of a council meeting or meeting the challenges presented to these groups without their own infrastructure and hierarchy. We currently have about 3 committee’s that report vertically into PC meetings. We must have more, so more gets done, more efficiently while empowering the committees and allowing PC to simply review the committees decisions

Assume that each committee has 4 people and meets for 2 hours per month. This is a fairly reasonable commitment. If you do the math, it comes to 1632 man hours. It’s equivalent to a full time person for an entire year. And much more powerful. In this model, you represent 20% of all parish families on a committee and this does not include Sunday school or Philoptochos. Committees are bodies that are empowered to think, create, resolve and act.

Contrast this 1632 man hours with the roughly 500 man-hours that the current Parish Council schedule provides.

We are no longer the 100 family church on Cedar Swamp Road. We are the 300 family Church on Cedar Swamp road.

To be successful and meet the needs of our Parishioners and community, we must take a different approach.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

The committee structure is designed to involve Parish council members, veteran parishioners, new members to the church, the young and old.

My own experiences are typical of what we realize with an expanded model of our existing committees. I was asked to chair the facilities committee about 16 months ago. This is clearly not my expertise. Father suggested I meet with a group of parishioners to beginning planning a long-term strategy for maintenance and upkeep. The group included George Lambrakos, Peter Nicholas, Theo Vazanellis and me. All of them were very knowledgeable and in different areas. We meet once a week to determine priorities, needs, strategy and a budget. Theo and I have continued to meet on a regular basis. We have as needed meetings with the construction committee and report to Parish Council as requested.

Our church is filled with talented and capable people. By nature, Greeks are entrepreneurs, doers and creators. We also tend to be very busy. Committees cannot be successful without talented and motivated people. The best people must have a chance to serve in their areas of expertise.

The utilization of these committees will enable us to manage the grout of our Parish, involve parishioners with a broad range of talents and develop the future leaders of our Church community.

The next two hours will be used to delve into the work of a couple existing committees. These break outs will be moderated by someone other than the committee chairperson. This will be an opportunity for to understand the work of the committees and brainstorm new ideas and vision for the future of these groups.

We hope you will participate in the breakouts, and if you are not currently on a committee, please consider serving on one we need your expertise and effort.

Break-out Sessions

Each of the four breakout sessions operated somewhat independently, so the published results vary in format.

Youth Commission

The following priorities were highlighted:

1.          Youth worship

a.          Stop-and-go Liturgy - when appropriate of perhaps on a Saturday, Father breaks down the liturgy in a more age appropriate fashion.

b.          In Sunday school, teachers prepare age appropriate lessons demonstrating the liturgy, students should be occasionally brought to church so the liturgy lesson in the classroom is brought to life as the students witness the liturgy in church.

2.          Schedule in the fall a youth orientation program for all parents, youth advisors, and a liaison from other church groups (i.e. council and Philoptochos)

a.          Introduction of the advisors

b.          Contact information for each group

c.           Each advisor gives an outline the their activities for the year

This should be done on a Sunday in the church

 

3.          Begin a YAL program - try to keep the 18-35 year olds interested in church activities.

a.          Begin with having a GOYA (graduates) reunion - make it social and fun

b.          Have them elect their own officers and agendas

c.           Slowly begin to involve the group with the church

d.          E-mail the weekly bulleting to graduated GOYA members that are in college. Keep them apprised of the church happenings so when they come home on vacation they feel comfortable to attend church.

4.          Begin a Junior Choir

5.          Better communications - set up a list server for youth only

6.          Every Youth organization should have written guidelines so if anyone is sick, or retires, the incoming advisor has some working knowledge as to how the organization works.

Strategic Planning

The attendees of the breakout session for the Strategic Planning Committee began by identifying strengths and weaknesses of the parish:

Strengths:

§              Our church & facilities

§              Our people

§              Our attitude – open lack of reproach

§              Our leadership – Fr. Manny

Weaknesses:

§              We need to educate our parish regarding their responsibilities to the church.

§              We need to build a cooperative – change the 80/20 model to one that is more balanced. This starts at the top, with

§              Development of a long-term financial plan

§              Create activities to bring people together

§              Strengthen our people

§              Develop events throughout the year

From this, they laid out a set of Strategic Objectives for the committee:

§              To ensure the long-term economic stability of the church.

§              Maximize the membership participation in all aspects of Parish Life

§              Develop programs of excellence to preserve the energy and maintain the loyalty and commitment of our members.

§              Assess & Improve our communications

§              Identify weakness and issues and develop solutions

Based on the above discussions, they proposed the following Mission Statement for the committee:

To Act as an advisory group made up of Past Presidents and others that identifies the long-term needs of the Parish, develops recommendations regarding these issues, and presents them to the Parish Council.

Membership Development

The Membership Development committee session set out to define high priority objectives for the year. Early in the discussion, those present acknowledged that Membership Development usually focuses almost exclusively on Fair Share. It was quickly agreed that rather than start with Fair Share as the sole discussion point, the group would instead focus on how best to grow the membership, recognizing that Fair Share could only grow if the parish grows.

Numerous ideas were discussed, and the following six were chosen as the most important:

§              A standing Welcoming Committee should be established. Rather than rotate greeters every week, a consistent group (that could rotate within itself, but over a relatively short interval) would take more responsibility and be better focused.

§              The committee should establish standard follow-up procedures for information received from prospective new members. Currently, visitors who fill out cards at the pangari have their names sent to the office. They then receive a Fair Share packet and go onto our mailing list, but we need to develop an approach that provides more of a personal touch.

§              We should look into the installation of a glass-enclosed directory board to include both photographs and contact information. This was in response to the sentiment that visitors and prospective members don’t have a good sense of who to contact about what. We want the leadership to appear more accessible.

§              Leadership must reach out to new members. While this point may be directly inferred from the previous two, it is worth stating on its own. If we do not try to include new members in our activities, we can’t count on them contacting us.

§              Include new members on committees was seen as one means of including them. It will also help folks to meet one another and to develop future parish leaders.

§              It was pointed out that we should plan more social get-togethers. We have dropped groups and events that were successful in our earlier days, such as the Mr. & Mrs. Club and our New Year’s party. While there may be a good reason why these specific items came to an end, something should exist in their place.

Facilities

The facilities committee discussed a wide range of issues related to both the maintenance and utilization of our parish facilities. Committee chair, Alex Ipiotis, noted early that he has requested a mechanism to allow parishioners to submit facilities-related requests on-line, and that Jim Gabriel is working on installing a package to perform this function.

The committee ended up prioritizing the following items / issues:

§              Review quotes to seal the Granite Floor

§              VCT tile downstairs to be buffed twice per year

§              Develop a routine to maintain the upkeep of the facilities

§              Create a list of year long maintenance items and ensure they are all in the budget

§              Youth Commission projects need to know who are in authority for each area: i.e. who should be approached for questions related to the facility

§              Communication needs to improve

§              Put the master parish schedule onto the website for check and book dates

§              Status of C.O. – a letter is ready to be sent to the village. This will be done immediately following the festival.

Wrap-up

During the wrap-up session, members of each break-out session presented their findings to the entire group.

The most common themes were:

1.          Improve numerous aspects of communication

a.          Between leadership and parishioners

b.          Between Parish Council and committees

c.           This can be aided with tools (such as Youth Listserver discussed in Youth Breakout) but also requires a conscious effort by members of leadership on an ongoing basis.

2.          Focus on our Youth

a.          Provide ministries for additional age groups, notably GOYAL

b.          Expand religious education

c.           Improve communication flows between existing groups

3.          Expand the leadership group to include more people.

It; is worth nothing that this last point was reflected in the post-conference survey, when the need to have more people participate in the conference was perhaps the one recommendation that was nearly unanimous.

Prayer Service

The conference concluded with a Prayer Service in the church.

Father Emmanuel led us in a service which included a portion of the Akathist Hymn. He divided those present into two groups that alternated reading the responses.

Father Emmanuel also provided a lesson on the background of the icon of the Virgin Mary that was in the church.

Survey

Summary of Data

Complete results are attached in Appendix C. Highlights of the results follow here:

Overall:

§              57% considered the day Productive

§              (An additional) 36% considered the day Extremely Productive

Level of Participation:

§              100% felt they had an opportunity to participate

§              79% thought that the level of participation was high

Conference Size:

§              79% would have preferred greater attendance

Individual sessions:

The most highly rated sessions were:

§              Youth Commission Breakout Session

§              Prayer Service

§              Membership Development Breakout Session

§              Welcoming Remarks

The Team Building Exercise was voted Most Enjoyable.

Individual Comments

All constructive comments were included, both those with praise and those with criticism or recommendations.

General Comments

(Some of these comments came directly from the survey while others were received by e-mail following the conference.)

§              I thought it was a great start.

§              Have a speaker from another parish which has held a similar conference to give an uplifting message as to its meaning and positive things which evolved as a result.

§              All active committees should be represented to field questions, with each sharing their strong points and success and noting areas that need improvement with additional funding or outside help.

§              The atmosphere was comfortable so that many people really opened up.

§              I think there should be a definite plan developed to implement some of the ideas, particularly as concerns the membership area. All in all, it was more productive than I had anticipated. Thanks!

§              We had a great conference on Saturday - very enlightening and meaningful.

Team Building Exercise

§              It showed how poorly we share information.

§              This took too long to accomplish the goal… next year's exercise should be shorter and faster to bring the understanding to its participants.

Breakout: Membership

§              High level of enthusiasm and participation.

§              Many good ideas and goals evolved from this session

§              People on this committee came away feeling that should set a date to begin regular meetings. Perfect.

§              A lot of what was discussed is already in place. Need to get an idea with some zing to attract new people

Breakout: Youth Commission

§              High level of enthusiasm and participation.

§              Many good ideas and goals evolved from this session

Breakout wrap-up

§              Too few attendees at this point. People were tired and anxious to leave. Maybe next year's conference should be shorter and have an incentive to keep the people until the end

Acknowledgements

This conference would not have been possible without significant input and effort from a large number of people. Special thanks to:

Event Planning

o            Nickie Demos

o            Alex Ipiotis

o            Parish Council Executive Committee

Catering / Kitchen set-up

o            Nickie Demos

o            Constance Denslow

o            Sally Gabriel

o            Alexandra Gratsias

Administrative Assistants

o            Patrick Bellidoro

o            Christina Christodoulou

o            George Verveniotis

Video / Photo

o            Chris Gabriel

o            Peri Ipiotis

Leadership, Guidance, Wisdom, et al.

o            Fr. Emmanuel Gratsias

Excerpt from wrap-up session: The Church of the Holy Resurrection is unique because of one man. Father Manny’s enthusiasm, love and dedication are contagious. It is because of him that we are here and it is because of him that we are constantly moving forward. Thank you, Father, for everything.

 

Appendix A – Correspondence

Invitation

Issued to Parish Council, Philoptochos and PC Standing Committee members:

Council Members, Parish Leaders and Committee Members:

As we begin our second full year in our new home, the potential for progress is enormous. We can l