Although I am extremely grateful that we live in a country that allows the church to meet in a public school and to have some of the freedoms that a nonprofit organization has, some of the legal & business aspects to church can make things a little blurry. We want to obey the law, and we want to do it in a biblical way. Reconciling those two takes a great deal of prayer, experimenting, and a willingness to rework things. 

And then again, God's church is a family, and every family has some "business" type things to deal with (Jess & I pay bills and budget our finances, each member of the family has chores they are responsible for, new "rules" are needed as the kids get older, etc). 

That said.....

For our annual business meeting (taking place Sunday, September 9) we would normally vote in new board members. But because this is only our second year as an autonomous church, we didn’t account for everything last year. We were supposed to appoint a nominating committee at last year's meeting,  but failed to do so. This needs to officially happen at a meeting, not just over email. So we will officially appoint them this year, and our members will vote on them, and then we will call for a special meeting in January or February, at which time we will vote in new board members that the nominating committee presents to us (the nominating committee will be Rebecca Carlson, Scot King, Mandy Mercado, Bod Daber, Jack Miskin, and Cindy Dornacker, so long as they get a vote in). 

In addition, we would normally invite everyone into some form of membership at True Life (we have had various types of membership that people can commit to for the year that simply allows for transparency and committment), but we are going to wait to do that until the special meeting in early 2019. This way, those from Relevant Church will get to have a few months with us before deciding how committed they want to be for 2019. 

Lastly, having a special meeting in January / February allows us time to take another look at our bylaws and make some changes. We are considering moving from a two-board system to a one-board system -- for theological, philosophical, and practical reasons. More on that to come. But suffice it to say, we need time to pray and wrestle through this properly. 

How we structured things a year ago has led to great improvements in our church. We have been freed up from depending on me, the lead pastor, for many things. I truly have become less important to the church in the last year, and that is a good thing. It is a godly thing. It is what I believe the Bible calls us to. 

In the winter, our governing team has led us through a massive evaluation of our specific ministires, pastoral staff and systems, and we made a ton of changes in the spring, which again led to more leaders being empowered in more ways (though not without some growing pains). 

As we look to rework the by-laws and the structure of our boards, we are believing the same kinds of improvement will happen again --- that more leaders will step up to care for others; more mentoring relationships will take place between generations; and that there will be more synergy between all our ministries, teams, and leaders as we seek this:

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. - Ephesians 4:16