I want to encourage you to attend the quarterly business meeting we will have on Wednesday, May 1 at 6:30 pm because we will be discussing important topics and need all perspectives present for those discussions.
A revision to our current by-law section regarding the reception of members has been drafted and approved by both the Deacons and the By-Law Committee. That draft now comes to the church for its consideration and vote. While you will want to read the changes in full, the main focus of the changes is to make it explicit that we will honor the baptism of those who have been baptized in other Christian denominations and will not require them to be rebaptized in order to become members of our congregation. These changes were the product of the church’s courageous conversation from January 2023.
We will also have the opportunity to hear additional information and have ongoing conversation about the needs of our facilities which we began hearing about in January 2024. Since that time, the church council has actively engaged this important issue, and we have run into new and expensive air conditioning problems which we were not aware of back in January. Members of the church council will be able to provide additional information so that we can continue our collective discernment of appropriate steps forward.
Finally, we will also hear about work being done to improve our posture of safety and security. The church council appointed a task force to study this issue and work on an overarching safety policy back in 2023, and that task force is making great strides forward. They are helping us to consider how we might be adequately prepared should there be an emergency health incident on campus, the arrival of inclement weather, or the presence of someone seeking to do harm. While there will not yet be a draft document for the congregation to review, we know that document is nearing a stage where the congregation can review it and discuss it before it is officially adopted in any capacity.
In the meantime, the church council is seeking to contract with a local security company (the same company that provided security during our joint service with Second Baptist) to provide security on Sunday mornings until such time as we may be able to move further along in our own security operations. It is lamentable that we are at such a place in our society that we have to consider this step, but it is unfortunately the case that churches have increasingly been targets of harm. The contract with the local security company will not be set until after the business meeting in case the need of further conversation or clarity arises at that meeting.
I look forward to seeing you at this important meeting so that we may help our church move forward on these and other important topics.
Grace and Peace,
John
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