Tim Postuma

This is a small suggestion...but one thing I've done in leading a couple of congregational meetings over the past year is to invite questions ahead of time.

In the materials distributed a few weeks before the meeting, I invited members of the congregation to email me their questions/concerns before the meeting. I explained that it wasn't to squelch comments at the meeting itself, of course, but to have a better meeting. If council gets questions beforehand, we know what some of the key issues to discuss will be. Plus we can even do a little research ahead of time or brainstorm some possible solutions to offer to the congregation. I think that leads to better decisions than on-the-spot scrambling!

I've only had a few take me up on it, but I think it helped. We had a big decision to make at our last meeting and I was able to respond to the person with some clarifications before the meeting. But then I also kicked off the congregational discussion with those same emailed questions....figuring they were probably on other peoples' minds as well.

Something to consider. Hope this helps.

My church has had married couples sharing an elder role. They're both full-fledged elders, but only one attends elder meetings at a time (i.e. one vote).

It's been a real blessing - both for their district who benefits from the gifts of two people, and for the couple as they work side-by-side in ministry. Win win, in my opinion.

Last month, we installed a married couple as deacons for the first time. I expect it will be as positive an experience as we've had with couple elders.

A few years ago, we switched to a process whereby current elders and deacons meet with nominees to PERSONALLY delivery the nomination letter and discuss it.

That personal touch has made a pretty big difference compared to the old method of just sending the letters out.

FYI, the denomination's annual Minister's Compensation Survey has asked churches about their 'Social Security Reimbursement'. It doesn't list how many churches do this, but it shows the average amount for those that do and, at least in the 2018 version, it says "Most churches reimburse their pastors for a portion of their self-employment tax."

The 2020 version uses a different method and so no longer itemizes this amount. But you can still see the 2018 and 2017 versions at: crcna.org/research

To me, it seems reasonable for a church to reimburse for the same amount as they would pay for any other church employee (I believe FICA would be 7.65% for the employer portion). But that's just my opinion.

Thanks, John. Great idea to share examples and compare notes.

In my own church, all the service participants video record their segments on their phone/laptop (worship leader, prayer, scripture reading, sermon, music) and get them to one person who strings them all together into one video. Similar to Mavis' example of San Jose CRC.

Nothing live, which makes it a bit less pressure :-)  But it still feels somewhat live, because we're using YouTube's 'premiere' feature so the video launches at 10:30 every Sunday and everyone can watch it together.

For the singing, where possible they are grabbing from the audio recordings of prior services. That's a bit of extra work, I'm sure, but it's kinda cool because we get to hear the voices of our own congregation singing.

After the service, people are invited to join a massive Zoom 'coffee time' that is just as chaotic as the real thing. We randomly split everyone into 5-minute breakout rooms of 3-5 participants so we can chat with people and reconnect. Every 5 minutes, we're brought back into the main Zoom meeting and randomly divided into new breakouts with different people. I wasn't sure about that idea at first but it's actually turned out to be a lot of fun.

Here's a link to an example service. For churches who don't want to do live streaming, but do have someone who can put the video clips together into one video, this option has worked well for us. 

If you're using a church management system (ChMS), check whether it offers online/recurring/text giving. If the fees are competitive, then doing it through your ChMS means no duplicate data entry of each donation. Giving history is logged automatically and some systems allow members to log in to do donation-related things (e.g. view giving history, adjust recurring gifts) as well as other functions (e.g. adjust their directory info, communication preferences).