April 2021

 

Easter Seaon - Hallelujah

Arts Committee

Heather Swallow, Chair

• As a representative of the Arts committee, K Barber volunteered to attend the May 13 Outreach meeting with other Players to discuss further the church’s response to homelessness, a discussion generated by an element of the Easter play. We are gratified that the discussion continues and look forward to the outcome.

• An outdoor Pentecost installation is planned for May 22^nd drawing on wind and fiery colours. Indoors, we hope to support a liturgical dancer to be filmed to enhance Pentecost Sunday worship. 

• K Barber and K Orchard are measuring and planning the installation of the New Life Banner and other artistic elements for the Memorial Centre.

Children, Youth and Family Committee

Irene Griffiths, Chair

• Operation Hearts Together, the “Be a Bunny” edition, involved 5 families delivering bags of Easter treats, baked goods, flowers, and cards to 5 senior congregation members before Easter Sunday. The recipients and the families were all different from those who participated in the Valentine event and all enjoyed the experience. We plan to continue Operation Hearts Together periodically next year.

• We were pleased that many children and youth participated in the Palm Sunday and Easter worship services, including Rielle Isaacs’ Palm Sunday reading with Mark Paetkau, the youth group’s participation in the Easter threshold moment, and Marc Holmes’ many roles in the Easter dramas and transitions.

• The CYF committee has agreed to conduct the annual reviews with youth group leaders, nursery workers and other part-time contract workers in CYF Ministries.

• With the Rejuvenation Committee, we reiterated the importance for the youth to have a space that is dedicated to them, even when they are not using it on Sunday mornings (not shared with the nursery).

• Events to recognize Cathy Cryder prior to her departure include a Zoom celebration to follow Cathy’s final worship service on May 30th.

Coordinating Minister's Report

Maggie Enwright, Coordinating Minister

Visioning Core Team

• The Visioning Core Team has selected Chris Ball as chairperson and Kelly Booth as administrative person and vice-chair.The Strategic Ministry Plan that was revised in 2018 and accepted by the congregation as guiding our work until the end of 2021 is being reviewed to acquaint all members with the activity of the congregation in recent years and to begin to think about what might be added, subtracted, changed, etc. in terms of our goals and aspirations before moving to the work of formulating steps for using our resources to achieve our goals.

• Marc Coulombe will join their May 19 Meeting and will be advising the committee on good processes to elicit congregational input.

Worship and Livestreaming Equipment

• The Finance Report will detail the excess cost of the live streaming equipment over what was budgeted. Worship Committee members were unanimous in their opinion that in spite of being over-budget this purchase and installation was crucial to offering good quality live streaming to make our worship services available to those who will not feel comfortable attending services in person.

Hiring Committee for CYF Minister

• This committee has submitted the job description to Region for approval before posting it on Church Hub and advertising for applications. We were advised that the job could only be open to Ministry Personnel OR a congregationally designated minister. The position will be open to Ministry Personnel. The start date for the position is July 1, 2021.

Rejuvenation

• Work is nearing completion. 

• The first 100 chairs have arrived. Property Oversight or Sanctuary Enhancement will need to take the lead on ordering more chairs.

Summer Spirit

• We will be joining (virtually) with Knox, Shaughnessy, Marpole, and St. Stephen’s for services from July 4 to September 5. 
• Pacific Spirit will be responsible for services on August 15, 22 and September 5. 
• The theme this year will be “The Gospel according to…” and topics so far are:  “The Gospel according to Broadway”, “The Gospel according to Starbuck’s”, and “The Gospel according to Dog”. 
• $1800.00 is left in the fund from previous years, so new contributions will not be required this year.

Finance Committee Report

Julie Poznanski, Chair

• The finance committee had a very substantive meeting this month, a sign of a congregation pivoting toward a broader future view with an exciting visioning process to take us there. Financial activity in the first quarter focused largely on property rejuvenation, technology needs, and new investment management.  A number of reporting matters including GST, annual charity return and 2020 financial review were discussed.

• The hope that we might begin to use our abundant resources for greater community outreach and partnerships was widely embraced and fits well with our stated principles of financial stewardship.

• The worship committee, with the assistance of Promosa and staff, has now developed a plan and pricing for specific upgrades for a new hearing assist system, live streaming capability and production computer – bringing the total cost to $29,450 or $8,650 over the original budget estimate. In light of a more expensive undertaking, the worship committee has reaffirmed the importance of this capability for future worship presentations. 

• As alerted in the budget report, we will soon need to order an additional 300 chairs for the sanctuary in addition to the 100 chairs obtained by the Rejuvenation team. If satisfied with the chairs, we will need to order the balance in anticipation of a return to full capacity in the sanctuary. Unfortunately, the cost of chairs has increased by an unprecedented 30% due to supply chain and other pandemic-related issues. This brings the cost of 300 chairs to $38,000.  

In Reach Report

Sally Ball, Chair

• Roll report submitted to minutes. Nothing further to report.

Ministry & Personnel

Jacqueline Kelly, Chair

• The M&P Committee held its regular monthly meeting via Zoom on April 7, 2021.
• The Commmittee will be meeting with Cathy Cryder on May 5 to discuss her time and experiences with Pacific Spirit.

Vacation and Study Leave Scheduling

• Maggie Enwright will be on vacation 15 June -15 July
• Deborah Laing will be on vacation 16 July- 16 August
• Deborah Laing will be on study leave 17-31 May

Property Oversight Committee

• No Report for April

Spiritual nurture

Chris Epting, Chair

• No report for April

Trustees Report

Doug Smart, Chair

• No report for April

Worship

Merrilee Thompson, Chair | Paul Westwick, Council Rep

• The committee met on April 14 with several issues for Council to be aware of, but no action needed at this time.

Creative Minds

• A “Creative Minds” session is being planned for late May to support the Worship team in planning for the fall.

Welcoming Piece for the Easter season

• Committee chairs are being asked to offer the “welcome piece” for the coming weeks’ worship videos.

Marble Communion Table

• We reiterated that a decision was made several years ago (and approved by Council) that this table could be given away/sold/re-purposed.

Increasing and Improving our capacity to stream worship services

• After lengthy discussion, we determined that there is significant value in improving our capacity to stream worship services: to enable people who are unable to attend to view the service from home and remain connected to the community, and possible evangelism beyond our current membership. Online viewing of services is not the same as becoming involved in the life of the congregation; next steps need to be imagined and operationalized.

• The plan being considered is to livestream the service as well as have the recording posted for viewing at a later time.  Privacy issues must be addressed and a preliminary conversation took place involving Rev. Maggie, the Worship Chair and our Privacy Officer.

• There was general consensus expressed that we should go ahead with the purchase of livestreaming equipment and a motion was passed allocating $3500 from the Memorial Fund to the purchase of livestreaming equipment.