Long Range Planning Committee Meeting Minutes
Triumphant Love Lutheran Church
Saturday, May 22, 2007

Attendees: Heather Pafk, Ed Scharlau, Pastor Norb Firnhaber, Jim Stotts, Chris Madgwick, and Murray Wells (Chair)

Discussion:

We reviewed the staffing discussion from the previous meeting and agreed that no formal feed back to the Mutual Ministry Committee is necessary. The staff is already discussing redistribution of responsibilities and Council is continuing to consider possible changes to structure and organization. We agreed that our committee’s responsibility is to develop long term plans consistent with the church's vision and recommend goals. We are not responsible for implementation.

We welcomed Chris Madgwick as the newest member of our committee. Chris will bring the perspective of the youth of our church to our planning efforts, a perspective largely missing since Rachel Halaney went off to college. He will also enhance our staff perspective and expand our young adult input.

We reviewed our earlier discussion of the implications of transitioning from a program size church to a corporate size church. The question was raised as to how important are numbers in our planning process. We agreed that in the original Vision 2010 development the goal was not to reach a certain number but rather to envision how we might grow over time to consider the implications of growth on the development of TLLC. As we begin to develop Vision 2015 however, we must consider that we have built a facility that will accommodate significant growth and we have taken on a large debt burden. In light of that achieving a certain growth may be more important in the new plan not for the sake of numbers but out of good stewardship of our resources.

We reviewed Ed’s list of Ministry Programs and agreed that the next step for the committee is to begin the process of envisioning what TLLC will look like in 2015 with emphasis on programs, resource requirements, and structure. We agreed that it would be beneficial to have a brainstorming session to include our committee, the church council, selected leaders of the congregation and any other members who choose to participate. This session is tentatively planned for Sunday evening September 30, 2007. To prepare for that session we agreed that Pastor would contact Synod to pursue the availability of a facilitator and the committee would develop a list of questions for the session at our next meeting. We also agreed to explore the possibility of building a Long Range Planning link on the TLLC website where we could post these questions and solicit input in advance of the session.

Next Meeting:  Monday June 11, 2007 at 7:00 pm