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Report from the Board Meeting
From February 1-3, the EP Board gathered at
Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis
for our semi-annual board meeting. Since the
EP board has served as the advisory committee
for the Lilly-funded Congregational Formation
Initiative, the primary purpose of this
meeting each year has been to advise project
director
Phil
Kenneson on matters related to the CFI. We
have been fortunate that the grant has
covered the cost of the meeting, for it has
given us an opportunity to attend to general
EP business as well. Email and phone
conversations can be enormously productive,
but some conversations require face-to-face
presence.
I would like to take this opportunity to provide
endorsers and friends with a report from the
meeting. Below you will find an introduction
to the board members, a brief list of
decisions taken regarding
initiatives, and a 2007 year-end financial
report.
Let me close by thanking the
Board for all its hard work -- for the time
each member takes out of her or his too-busy
lives to gather, to support the EP, to run
initiatives, to counsel, to pray, to laugh,
and in their various ways to do the
work of building up the church in their
particular places. Working with them and
working with the EP continues to be a
privilege and a blessing.
M. Therese Lysaught, Chair, EP Board
Welcomed by Englewood Christian Church
For the past few years, the EP Board has met for
its mid-year meeting at the
Cenacle
Retreat Center in downtown Chicago. The
Cenacle is a wonderful oasis in the middle of
Lincoln
Park, and they have blessed us with their
hospitality and prayers. Last year, however,
the board decided that, if possible, it would
make good sense to begin holding the February
meeting at an EP-affiliated congregation. We
hoped that this would acquaint board members
and the congregations with each other and
would help us begin to build a network of
relationships between congregations.
So this year, we convened at Englewood
Christian Churchin Indianapolis. We have
introduced EP endorsers to Englewood in a
previous edition of this newsletter. We are
deeply grateful for the generous hospitality
of Michael and Lisa Bowling and the good
people who serve at Englewood. Church
members opened their homes to the women on
the EP board. The men on the board camped in
Englewood's mission house. Through their
community kitchen, they fed us with
delicious, healthy (even vegan!) fare and
provided us with space for prayer and work.
On Sunday morning, we met with their adult
Sunday school classes to talk about the EP and
CFI, then joined them for worship, where we
reflected on Thessalonians and were delighted
by the children's dramatic presentation of
scenes from the life of Moses. As always,
Englewood embodied the superabundance of
God's grace and gift. We remain deeply
grateful for their hospitality and
friendship.
Meet the EP Board
Who are these people on the EP board
to whom
we keep referring? In a spirit of servant
leadership, the Board has functioned largely
in the background. As
a working Board, most of the board members
head up or participate in various EP
initiatives. The Board meets twice a year --
once in February and on the afternoon after
the summer Gathering -- to attend to EP
business. At these meetings and in the
interim, they do the work of the EP and
advise the coordinator and chair as needed.
For this edition of the newsletter, we thought
it might be fitting to introduce the board.
So we have prepared a "Meet
the EP Board" page
on the website. Click on the link to meet
these good folks.
Flourishing Initiatives
Taking stock of our initiatives, the Board
concurred that many are flourishing. We are
particularly pleased with:
The success of these
initiatives is due in no small part to the
teams of endorsers who work to make each
initiative hum. In future issues of the
newsletter, we will introduce you to these
teams.
On the Horizon
What did the board accomplish at its February
meeting? Some of its decisions at this point
are too preliminary to really discuss; others
will be featured in upcoming issues of the
newsletter. In this issue, we would like to
highlight two:
The Congregational Formation
Initiative: The Board discerned that the
Congregational
Formation Initiative is both central to the
work of the EP and clearly has been powerful
for the pilot congregations. Therefore, we
decided that we will continue the CFI in other
congregations,
financing it with EP resources while
continuing to seek external funding
support.
A New Round of Pamphlets: One of the
quietest but most greatly utilized
initiatives of the EP is the pamphlet series.
To date, we have published fourteen
pamphlets, and they continue to be downloaded
from the website. Having put much of our
energies into the CFI over the past two
years, the pamphlet series has been a bit
sleepy. We decided that it's time to
commission a new round of pamphlets, with a
goal of producing three to five a year for
the next three years.
Regional Gathering: Portland, Oregon
As we mentioned in the last issue of the
newsletter: There will be a Northwest
Regional Ekklesia
Project gathering in Portland, Oregon. The
topic
will be on Inhabiting The Church: Ecclesial
Discussions in New Monasticism. If
you're interested, pick up the book
by the same name from our friends at Wipf and
Stock. The speakers will be Jonathan
Wilson-Hartgrove, Tim Otto, and Jon Stock. The
dates are Feb. 29th & Mar. 1.
For news, updates and registration information
contact Michael
Munk.
2007 EOY Financial Report
Assisted by the fine work of bookkeeper
Melissa Benton, the EP is for the first time
in the position to provide endorsers with an
annual financial report. This report has
been posted to the website under "2007
Financial Report." Alternatively, you
can find this report under the "What We Do"
section of the website.
We are happy to report that for at least the
third year running, the EP has closed the
year (slightly) in the black. The summer
gathering remains self-sustaining,
which is one of our goals. More importantly,
we remain deeply grateful for endorser
contributions which, once again, were just
enough to cover our basic operating expenses.
Roughly seventy congregations and individuals
made financial contributions to the EP in
2007.
In moving ahead with the CFI and
the new round of pamphlets, we know that our
operating expenses will increase. But we
have committed ourselves to these initiatives
confident that endorsers will support them.
Gathering 2008: Crossing the Divide: Race, Racism, and the Body of Christ
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Mark your calendar: we gather July 7-9, 2008
at DePaul University in Chicago.
Look for registration information next month.
Our Price:
$ we hope the same as last year
Learn More about prior gatherings
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