Actions and Decisions of the Pastoral Council

July 2007
House Churches and Summer
We recognized that attendance and availability in house churches are going to ebb and flow over the summer and that's natural.

Piazza
This has been developed and is growing life. A bike rack has been added, along with chess,  cornhole. Folks are naturally hanging out regularly. Neighborhood folks cycle through.

Three Church Gathering
University Christian Church (Troy Jackson), Walnut Hills Fellowship (Bart Campolo) ... want to interact more with VC. There are plans for a joint church August 26 grill out. More info to come.

Festival Day
The Speckled Bird churches are planning a festival day in August. More info to come.

Neighbor Day (Labor Day) Party
At Millcrest Park ... Ultimate Frisbee, cookout, etc. In association with West Norwood Neighborhood Association. We'll involve neighbors in the preparations. Sept. 3.

Next Meeting
August 12 following the Town Meeting.


June 2007
The pastoral council met with Eric and Elaine Hansen regarding the building team. The building team will begin a weekly meeting in the St. Elizabeth space beginning Monday June 25 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm and continuing every Monday evening. These meetings will take time on the front end for conversation, then spend time working on a task in the building. Anyone is welcome to join these gatherings. The Hansens will also be asked to share at the next Leadership Community Meeting some of the things they've been hearing in prayer and shaping toward a vision for the St. Elizabeth space.

We also spent time in prayer together on behalf of our house churches and leadership care.

May 2007
Leadership Community Meeting
The next LC meeting (a monthly meeting of all house church leaders, board of trustees, pastoral council, and ministry leaders) will be on Sunday June 10. At this meeting we'll be talking about the Leadership Sustainability Fund proposal, and also about how decisions are made at VC. We ask house church leaders to please take some time this month, before June 10, to discuss these thoughts with your house church, and come prepared to summarize and represent your house church's ideas.

The schedule for LC meetings for the rest of 2007 will be:
June 10, July 22, August 19, September 9, October 7, November 4, December 2.

April 2007
Leadership Retreat
We discussed plans for the next Leadership Retreat (fondly known as the LeTreat). We plan to hold a retreat this fall and are approaching MaryKate Morse as a guest speaker.

Partnership
The Pastoral Council is exploring a partnership between Vineyard Central and CCO, especially regarding outreach to Xavier.

The Flyers
We began plans for a weekend on July 27-29 at VC with The Flyers, a husband and wife singing team who perform for children and adults . We'll be organizing a children's event / neighborhood outreach with The Flyers giving a concert or two.

Norwood Events
In continuing our discussion and efforts to be supporters of service events / programs already established in Norwood, we talked about several upcoming events in Norwood. These events are posted on our site on this page.

March 2007
Vision for Vineyard Central
We read passages from Isaiah 58 and 61, and from Luke 4, then spent time dreaming about how to apply the heart of these passages to Vineyard Central's ministry in Norwood. brainstormed ideas of how we in Norwood can apply the thoughts from these passages. We'll continue this discussion at our next meeting, and as ideas gel and become reality we can post more specifics here.

Hospitality
Kevin expressed gratitude that members of Vineyard Central along with families from Ordinary Community are pitching in to help host 70 people who will be coming to town this weekend for the Feast of St. Patrick event.

Leadership Appreciation Dinner
We made plans to host this dinner on April 14 to show our thankfulness to the house church and ministry leaders.

February 2007
House Churches
We began with a review of each of the house churches. A council member had been in touch with most of the various house church leaders over the past month to see how things are going and offer support. The new Leadership Community meetings also are providing an avenue of support for the leaders as well. We recognized that some house churches are growing to where they might be in need of birthing, but leaders aren't ready yet to lead those new groups. This raised the question of "How do we get 'ready' leaders in place so that when a HC is ready to birth it can?". We decided to bring this question to the leadership community to pray about together, and to discuss the possibility of it being an expected practice of every leader to identify another emerging leader.

Engaging in our Community
We discussed the question of "what if Vineyard Central became really great supporters of other service events / programs already established in Norwood, rather than solely creating our own. This would help us get more into the community, knowing our neighbors. Some examples would be:
• Norwood Service League
• Health Department gives out food
• YMCA and its youth programs
• West Norwood Neighborhood clean up days
This is "asset based community"... get plugged into what’s already happening.
Juli Thompson will do research to compile a list of what's out there that we might plug into. Dave Thompson will contact the director of the Norwood Service League. We'll also plan a neighborhood party for April and will take into account this philosophical shift in our planning.

January 2007
Northside
We recognized that it seems obvious that there’s a new energy developing in the Northside area. We feel we need to be encouraging Jesse and Ryan MooneyBullock in particular in leading folks spiritually in that area.

Missions and VC
We reiterated what Kevin spoke of at the Sunday morning gathering on December 31 regarding missions.
• Owen Brock left for Africa today to connect with an AIDS orphanage in Soweto, South Africa.
• There's a connection to a group in India that takes in abandoned children and another group that rescues young girls sold into prostitution.
• There's a spiritual lane lane opening up to encourage/work with the emerging Vineyard home church network in Berlin.
We, the Pastoral Council, feel we need to nurture these things prayerfully. We're not sure what that looks like but will continue praying and looking.

Convent Retreats
Dave Nixon shared that VC is receiving support from the Great Lakes Region to begin hosting retreats for Vineyard pastors in the Great Lakes area. We have 8 retreats lined up for 2007. VC is movinginto a stage in our history where we're becoming a resource for others.

Sunday Serving
Kevin would like to begin once a month corporately reaching out to the neighborhood. He'll take the lead on this and begin scheduling it.

Town Meeting
First town meeting is on Feb. 18 from noon - 1 pm in the auditorium. The pastoral council will be present to answer questions.

December 2006
Budget and Communication
We knew the Board would be meeting next Saturday to finalize the budget for 2007. We discussed the need for better communication regarding the budget, and will post the 2007 budget online in a narrative form once it's been set by the Board. The narrative form will help explain just what each budget category is used for.

Leadership Community
We talked about the new direction for the Leadership Community which will begin again in January with Dave Nixon leading it. It will focus on training and conversation on topics such as discipleship, prayer, hospitality, reaching out, gifts and roles, and practicing community.

Town Meetings
In order to improve communication within the VC community, we decided to have "town meetings" once a quarter. These will be held at noon on the designated Sundays and will be an opportunity for anyone interested to meet with the PC and ask questions, give feedback, etc.

Aaron Resigned
Aaron Klinefelter resigned from the PC. He's served for over a year and feels he'd like to take a sabbatical from leadership in order to spend more time with his family. He'll still be part of the VC community and he and his wife Sarah will continue to be the hosts for the Ashwood House Church.

November 2006
What must a house church do to be in the VC network?
- designate a leader who will attend to the spiritual life of the members

- participate economically in the life of VC
(this involves making a monthly pledge as is requested by the BoT and contributing that to the network)

- leader participates in the Leadership Community (LC)

- house church is open to others who want to join them in their mission

- leadership of the house church embraces the 6 guiding values of VC

VC Sabbath
We want to preserve one day a week that VC doesn’t schedule "busines" meetings … a Sabbath. We're initiating the practice of “sabbathing” on Saturdays from VC business, therefore we won't schedule LC, PC, or BoT meetings on Saturdays, and will encourage other ministry leaders to do the same.

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1757 Mills Avenue, Norwood, OH 45212 • 513-396-7202