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2025-05-13 Meeting Minutes

Convention Cost and Registration
  • Determine cost of convention
    • Tasony Sherry to get updated costs from Ts. Sarah
      • Rooms, meals, conference rooms
    • Flights and rooming/meals for speakers
    • $10-15 per person to cover snacks, name badges, etc. miscellaneous
  • Open Registration by Mid-July
    • Oct. 3 is retreat
    • Ts. Sarah needs final numbers two weeks prior (mid-September)
    • We want to close registration a month prior (mid-August)
      • Gives us time to extend by two weeks to end-August/mid-September
    • We want to open registration a month prior (mid-July)
    • We should try to have registration ready to go at the Zoom meeting
Topics
  • We had discussed asking experienced Coordinators to speak to the group. HEMY Recommendation to send message to fathers to recommend coordinators that would be good candidate to give a talk/serve on panel.
    • Fr Simon to draft message for the fathers
  • Schedule
    • Friday Evening (Administrative)
    • Saturday Morning (Spiritual): Fr John
    • Saturday Evening (Educational): Mary Soliman
    • Sunday (Pastoral): 3-4 Coordinators who have successfully shepherded their programs through various seasons, so we'll have a discussion and a panel

  • Are Scenarios conducive to all topics?
    • We can only do scenarios on Saturday morning and evening; not on Friday or Sunday
      • Friday is administrative
      • Sunday is the pastoral (coordinators panel)

    • Saturday Morning (Spiritual): Fr John's Topic
      • The season is not 100% correlated with the size of the church; some churches are always going to stay small, but they still have seasons
      • Is Fr John's topic about...
        • The seasons a church goes through
        • The seasons in the life of a coordinator
      • The Seasons in the Life of a Coordinator

    • Saturday Evening (Educational): Mary's Topic
      • Will likely be structured a little differently within the timeframe (3 hours) given
      • Is Mary's topic about...
        • How do you take the existing SS Curriculum with lessons for an age group and adapt to churches of different shapes, structures and sizes?
        • Training the Service Coordinators for how they can evaluate the teaching styles of the servants and how the servants can self-reflect/self-evaluate with the hopes of improving their delivery
      • A little bit of both
        • Curriculum Adaptability
        • Classroom management
        • Discussion of Token Economies
          • Debate style
      • We may pull some of these points to use in a Zoom meeting (so we aren't strapped for time at the retreat)

  • Sally: We need a youth about motivating youth who are distracted by the world or are "always busy"
    • Fr John: Youth are capable of being motivated and we can see that in things like Eleven22 and other Evangelical Movements in the US
    • Lydia: Similar things happening in Tampa with Radiant Church... Some of the appeal of these churches comes from interest-based small groups. A group of people with same interests get together, eventually have Bible Studies together, etc.
    • Fr John: It is good to define what those churches are doing, explain that appearances may be misleading, the definition of success for them might be packed halls and big numbers; but there is no retention - retention in numbers, or even retaining love of God. They lack sacraments, etc.
    • Fr John: Perhaps now, more than in the past, our youth may be enticed by this
    • We may consider a topic like this for the Zoom meeting after the convention (e.g. January), since it was one of the topics at the last convention (building bold youth)
    • Maybe this can be a mealtime discussion?
    • Can also fall under the Pastoral Topic with the Experienced Coordinators
Convention Logistics
  • Ride Share
    • Not sure if people used it last time
    • It's free for us to use, let's set it up again and potentially market it better to the group to use it
    • We may want to mention it in our next Zoom meeting with Coordinators
    • Mary to create ride share link again
  • Audio/Video
    • Morcous to take care of recording lectures or delegate it
Another Zoom Meeting
  • We had discussed doing them quarterly (convention would be one of the quarterly meetings)
  • We should plan for one in the Summer
  • Should we try to get HEMY to speak in the Zoom Meeting?
    • Spirituality of the Servant
    • Personnel Issues
      • Conflict Resolution
      • How to discipline a servant
      • Developing the servants when they need to be corrected or encouraged
    • How to be a Servant Leader to the Servants
  • Fr Simon to reach out to HEMY with request for June date and topic