Emmanuel United Methodist Church: Church Council / Council of Ministry

November 26, 2007

Attendees:

Rev. Michael Dobbs Randall Ruiz Linda Osoria Belinda Rojas

Ruben Ruiz James Almanz Alice Esparza Arturo Gonzalez

Leticia Estavillo Ernest Rodríguez Edward Gonzales Yolanda Mungia

Liz Almanza Diana Guevara Hope Rodriguez David Ancira

Sam Ruiz David Rivera Ruby Rivera Suzanne Subia

Martin Aleman Nephtali Luna Rev. Paul Barton Rebecca Gutierrez

Martin Rodriguez Eleazar Rodriguez Sarah Surito Anita Almanza

Jose Almanza Ethan Varela Odelia (?) S(?)

Handouts: Agenda and Mission/Outreach

Opening/Introduction: Psalm 133. The Hope Rodriguez led the group in prayer. The Council sung “The Church’s One Foundation”

OLD BUSINESS:

Randy reviewed a quick synopsis of what happened during the Charge Conference.

A previous question for Worship Committee: Are we going to have one service during the Family Retreat.

NEW BUSINESS:

Previous motion was made to look into having a combined service. The Worship committee did meet. The pros and cons for the one service was sent out to everyone. These were read aloud. The following points were discussed during the majority of the meeting:

Comments against a combined service:

Possibly lose people to other churches.

It’s not just an issue of language but of worship style reflecting the interests of the overall church and not just a select few.

This may deter new immigrants or Spanish speakers from attending the service.

Worried that the service would be too long.

Sermon points in English and Spanish will be repetitive to bilingual persons.

Maybe we can switch the English and Spanish times to see how that works.

Comments for a combined service:

During the revival seminar, Rev. Saenz mentioned, due to the overall decline in attendance, we should consider combining our services to unify our church with one-worship time.

There has been growing division between the two services resulting in backstabbing, emails, letters, etc. One service may alleviate or eliminate this divisiveness.

Fear of change shouldn’t keep us from moving onward.

Sometimes we have to “prune away” the old to allow growth to develop.

In addition to a language difference between the services there is a generational/age difference between the services. If we combine the services it will allow the generations of this church to get to know each other.

Young Adults are excited about the combined service because it will be later and allow them to invite friends to this worship.

Our technology will allow a combined service without as many previous problems.

Other General concerns:

We need to, as leaders and members of this church, pray to God for his direction.

We need to have clean hearts that want to serve God.

We need to be more loving as a church. God wants us to love him.

This church suffers from pride and/or attitude and if we are going to be a church we need to humble ourselves.

People are late coming to the worship service, especially the 8:30. This is disrespectful to God. We need to be committed as a people. It looks bad to visitors/guests.

There needs to be less destructive criticism of the church and its leaders and more positive direction.

Various ministries are dying out, some of the church leaders are burned out. We need to rely more what God wants us to do. We have potential.

We do not invite new people to the church.

We need to be cautious of when we throw around words such as “its God’s Will” because we need to distinguish between our will and God’s will.

Focus on God and he will make a way.

Our discussion of worship is a symptom of our failure to grow which is a failure to evangelize or reaching out. Worship is a symptom of not growing.

We need the band to be a worship band playing in all the songs and not just the contemporary ones.

Don’t think about what’s in it for you, but what you can give to the church to make it better.

Regardless of the outcome, we need to be united as a church.

Motion: That we have one combined service the first Sunday of the month. This was withdrawn.

Motion: To have for the entire month of February a combined service. To have four Sundays of combined services and at the end of the month we, as a church, would gather and evaluate what direction we want to go. This motion was passed.

In January, we will have a council meeting and have the worship committee will met and determine times, layout of the service, and so forth. No meeting date/time was set at this time

The meeting ended in prayer.