January 2019 Ritual for Business Minutes (draft)

Minutes for the Ritual For Business on 1/19/2019

Present: Susi, Devin, David, Matt, Barbara

  1. Roles: Barbara as Vibes Watcher, Devin as Parliamentarian, Matt’s took on the Devil’s Advocate, and David wielded the Spatula.
  2. Chalice: Devin lit the chalice.
  3. Agenda: approved as presented.
  4. Minutes: approved December minutes.
  5. Treasurer: Income is at $500 ahead of last month; pledges are at 83% of budget expectations. Expenses stand at about 62% of budget expectations. Bank account is at $9905.50 currently. Church Mutual has been contacted and they said the bill won’t even be due until March. Devin wondered if anyone would like to get a second key for the P.O Box; he has time to check it about twice a month. David thinks the hassle of changing our mailing address everywhere would be worse than finding a person who can go to Westport one additional time a month. Tax letters will be going out by the end of January.
  6. Committee Reports
    1. KidSpace – Erin wants to discuss the idea of having in-depth KidSpace classes during the summer, and then shorten Sunday classes to half an hour in the ‘off-season’ and then just monitor their play. Barbara noted that there has been a bit of miscommunication with Tori on Sundays during the last couple weeks; we knew she wouldn’t be there on 12/31 but then also wasn’t present on 1/6.
      There was an issue with the two small boys who visited a couple of weeks ago; due to the disorder of the room the smaller boy found and carried around several beads in his mouth for a while.
    2. Communications – Editorial Policy meeting for December 19th was canceled due to sickness and difficulty in scheduling, but Kimberly has started drafting a policy and working on it with those .
    3. Social Justice/Welcoming – some people are going to the Women’s March this afternoon (Rally has been moved inside). Hope Haven shelter in Harrisonville has enthusiastically accepted our offer of collecting items and money to donate to them.
    4. Ritual Teams – RT met and critiqued a couple of rituals. We decided not to cancel last Sunday, and there was actually a great turnout (above average) despite the weather.
    5. Liaison – Susi signed the lease last month. There is a bit of a question about whether God Auction can be on the second Sunday, or needs to be moved to the third Sunday because of a conflict with another possible event in this space.
    6. Nom Com – no tasks, no report.
    7. Membership – we probably should check in with Aaron about becoming a member.
    8. Stewardship/Platforms – Matt has done soul searching about the Asgard event; he feels pretty confident that the effort and expense would not result in a profitable venture. Several new people have showed up from WMUs.
      Matt thinks that the current trend toward downsizing/decluttering means we should try to hold a garage sale this year; Barbara thinks her subdivision will be holding a neighborhood-level garage sale, but doesn’t know the exact date yet.
      Penny Auction nominations will start on Imbolc, which means the group that wants to revise how Penny Auction works need to actually meet and come up with a proposal before Spring Equinox if they have one.
  7. Old Business
    1. Potlucks – last Sunday it came out that there were richly varied opinions of what the new schedule of potlucks will entail. It was still unclear whether we had confirmed that the extra dates were part of the new lease. David proposed that we revisit the idea of having those four ‘off-month’ potlucks at members homes instead of 4327 Troost. Consensed; Stewardship will take ownership of that and find a location for late February.
  8. New Business
    1. Matt is concerned about the God Auction’s declining revenue arc. Barbara wants to get more details on both GA income and attendance. David suggested we get one more year of data points before making a decision; as Kimberly has repeatedly pointed out and Barbara noted today, no other fundraisers have really prospered even as much as last year’s GA in the last ten years. Longest Night faltered in about 4-5 years, partly due to the winter weather unpredictability.
    2. Phone Call – Katie relayed a phone call to the Gaia line about a gentleman who wants to come teach a class for us; David will relay that to Jamie the RTC and have them take ownership of vetting the proposal. No one here knew either person mentioned in the call personally.