This request has come to us just after the Church Council met last month.
Jeannine Klock has been praying about and developing a summer "school" for children of working parents who need a safe place for their children during the summer vacation. She has modeled some of her forms after the program offered at St. Stevens during the summer and begun to gather teachers and curriculuum.
I asked the UMW to sponsor it as a mission with contributions from it going to the UMW but they felt they could not (and it would have been a large undertaking to handle the finances through their account. For Trinity Church it will be another #200 or #900 account in our list of many such accounts.)
So I am asking for your prayers and support to do all we can to quickly make this a possibility for Jeannine to offer this summer school (camp) for children in our church and the community. She has a couple teachers lined up and her son Anthony set to feed the children each day. But we need to get the word out for families to register for this NOW.
Are Trinity Church and the Church Council able to help make ministries like this happen, and happen quickly? I know some of you need to think about things. I would ask that we all pray as we think and all do whatever little piece we can to help Jeannine help children and families this summer. One of the questions is can we set up the payments for the teacher services as subcontractors to this program?
John, I am seeing this as a mission outreach of our church (especially as there will be a possibility of scholarship help for the weekly cost of the program) but as with many of our missions like refugees or Gateway/Longview we seem to have one person who runs with it. Jeannine would be such a runner.
Bob Kaiser has indicated the church insurance will cover the program, but he wants us to get a building use agreement negotiated and signed.
The summer school was going to make a donation to UMW but will now make that donation to the church for the use of the space. As our budget is balanced with more income than outgo, I would like to use income from this program to support our Christian Education program whose budget was cut in our efforts to set a balanced budget.
I have support from Ginny Wilkinson for them to use the nursery school room if needed, and support from Mark and Liz.
Nate, can we get this on the council blog and ask for comments? How do you see us building consensus or calling for votes once a couple details are worked out? We need this soon rather than at the next meeting for the hope of having any students enrolled.
Thanks for all of your help in making this little miracle happen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm not certain how we would vote this in... I haven't actually seen our bi-laws so I don't know what we need for a quorum nor what allowances we may have for voting in absentia. My feeling is that if we have a committee that will claim it (maybe missions or CE), they've spoken with and met the requirements of the trustees and whomever else they need to, and nobody voices serious objection here, we could probably move forward without a vote.
ReplyDeleteAlternatively, if people feel that a vote would be in order (or we can't find a home committee for the ministry) we could establish an informal consensus here and (assuming the consensus is in the affirmative) give them the go ahead to get started before the official vote is taken on the 21st.
Jeannine's program sounds fine to me, and I hope we can pull it off. But my Trustee responsibilities compel me to insist on two conditions.
ReplyDelete1. The building use issues must be handled in accordance with Para 14 of our building use policy:
"14. Long term users, e.g. Nursery School: Mutually agreed fee, put in writing. Other conditions of use, such as storage, kitchen privileges, door keys, etc also shall be agreed with the Trustees in writing."
2. The program must be an "outside" use of our facilities and not a Trinity program. Our formal relationship to Jeannine's organization must be that of landlord and tenant.
Item 1 is required to maintain the integrity of our building use policy (a clear Trustee responsibility). The proposed program seems like a nearly identical counterpart to the long-standing Grand Island Cooperative Nursery School program. It also has much in common with the three private music lesson programs held here and with Heidi Mumm's Islettes program. All of these programs are have contracts and are recognized as outside, not Trinity, programs.
Item 2 is necessary to help protect Trinity's assets (a key Trustee responsibility) and reputation from any charges of misconduct that could possibly occur in the program, especially because the highly-charged issue of child abuse could be involved. Adverse legal judgments there could conceivably exceed the limits of our insurance, and even unsubstantiated charges could seriously damage our reputation. And of course the proposed program, by its staffing, fee structure and secular nature, is inherently an outside program, which could be brought "inside" only by rather artificial means.
In particular, formal sponsorship by the UMW, designation as a church program by the Church Council, passing program money through Trinity's books, considering their teachers to be Trinity employees/self-employed workers/vendors, and mention of Trinity in their literature as anything other than the program's location all would be counter-productive without, as far as I have been able to learn, serving any useful purpose. The long-time success of the very similar GICNS program without such connections certainly demonstrates that none these things are essential. And, of course, cooperation and support by Trinity is fine, as long as it can be seen as just that and not as management or direction.
I hope that these two conditions can serve as useful landmarks to further the progress of this ambitious journey toward summer childcare at Trinity.
I would welcome "peer review" of my assertions by the other members of the Church Council.
For the Kingdom, Bob Kaiser
Due to concerns raised and unresolved, I informed Jeannine that we cannot proceed under the church umbrella. I will now hope to work with the council for the policies and procedures to enable us to open the umbrella wider in the future with the hopes for programming and ministry in the future. Thank you all for your input pro and con, and for all of your prayers. Sometimes I need to be reminded that the world does not move at the speed of Jeff.
ReplyDelete