Wardens’ Report: June 2019
The Wardens’ Report: a brief summary of highlights from monthly Vestry meetings, designed to provide information about our growth, finances, priorities and progress towards our strategic plan.
At our June 18th vestry meeting, we enjoyed dinner together and prayer before starting the meeting. This month, Brad Jones led us through prayer which included a time of intercession and prayer for Isaiah Brooms, our Director of Youth Ministries. We prayed that above all every middle school and high school student who enters Restoration would know how precious they are and how deeply loved they are loved by the amazing God who created them. We prayed over and gave thanks for our youth leaders without whom APEX would not be possible. We gave thanks for how APEX has grown in the last year. We prayed over Isaiah’s final coursework as he finishes seminary and gave thanks for all he has learned during his intensive year of study. We prayed for Isaiah and his family that they would grow together as a family and they would have peace and rest. Additionally, we prayed for those sick in our community, for the hiring of a new Director of Worship Arts, for wisdom in our budgeting process, and for the Strategic Plan (Restoration 2025). As always, we invite you to join us in praying over the staff, vestry and all of God’s work on Quincy Street.
In our meeting, we received an encouraging update from Incarnation Anglican Church and gave thanks for the hard work Incarnation has done to grow into the church that it is. We began thinking and praying about who will represent Restoration as Delegates at the DOMA Synod in November.
David Hanke led us in a discussion of our Strategic Plan (Restoration 2025). We spent some time reviewing the survey results we collected last month (thank you to all who filled out the survey–every comment was noted!) and then pivoted to next steps. We continued a discussion that we began during a vestry brunch with +John Guernsey about what we dream for Restoration in five years (and beyond) and what we believe God is calling our church to do and to be. We are grateful for the work of our Strategic Planning Advisory Team and welcome your prayers as we continue working on this plan.
Brad Jones, our treasurer, led us through a financial report that showed May giving was 24% over projections bringing our current annual offerings received to just 8.75% below projections versus the 12%-below that we’ve been experiencing for several months. We are grateful for this news and the generosity of our congregation–thank you. Brad also presented two options from our finance team for fiscal year 2020 (Restoration’s fiscal year runs September to August). The vestry will vote on the budget at their July meeting. They are currently looking to hold our budget steady (which is essentially the FY18 offerings budget) or make approximately 5% in cuts compared to the FY18 budget.
Johanna Montague, one of our wardens and our liaison with our personnel team, gave a brief update on the hiring process. We are thankful for the hiring of Ryan Goyer as our new Communications Coordinator. Ryan has been in the Restoration office for training and officially joins our team in July. We are in the interview process with several candidates for the Director of Worship Arts position and we ask you to join us in praying that we find the right candidate for this position. Finally, we are delighted to have Scott Buckhout back as our summer intern.
If you have questions, concerns, words of wisdom or encouragement, please know that we are open to your feedback. You can read an archive of past Wardens’ Reports on our website or Vestry Meeting minutes on CCB, under the ‘Files’ tab in the ‘Entire Church Group’
– Chris Belen and Johanna Montague, Wardens