• As the Equmenia association’s representative was unable to attend the meeting, the Board had received a short film as a greeting and report. The film showed how the association’s Board met in “Lilla Sport”. On the agenda was scouting, a discussion about membership fees, the association’s Annual meeting on 10 March 2019, and plans to organize a ski camp in 2020.
• Draft budget 2019. A draft budget for 2019 was presented. The Board reaffirmed that the ministry action plan controls the budget. The main question is what we want to do as a church? In the priority work that a budget preparation means, it is vital to have control over fixed expenses.
The draft budget presented is above previously discussed figures. This depends on the current work with the church’s website as well as planned renovation work in Waldenströmssalen.
IT is currently a heavy ministry cost. But with the investments now made, the Board believes that the costs will eventually fall.
On the revenue side, we believe and work for increased offerings which, together with other measures, will bring the church to a balanced budget by 2010.
The Board’s appeal to the management team was – please do all you can to be restrictive in the present budget work until decisions are taken on the budget at the next Board meeting on 12 December.
• The project ”Immanuel 2.0” is a proposed continuous and long-term work to revitalize Immanuel church, especially the Swedish part, which today experiences some stagnation and has a demographic structure where the so-called “middle generation” as well as children and young people are missing.
In the first phase of the project plan, Claes Jonsson described Immanuel 2.0 as an investment in the process that can make the church a growing congregation, both in number and content.
The project should start with a current situation analysis, both internally and externally. It should not be charged to the ordinary ministry, nor to operational funds.
A discussion followed Claes Jonsson’s introduction. Among other things, it was about the importance of a low average age in the project group, but also the importance of the elderly supporting and cheering.
It is also important to involve the congregation and to further reinforce this intention in the project description. The theological and spiritual dimension should also be clearly stated in the project plan, especially when it comes to the question “how do we build a congregation?” How will this matter be going on?
The Councils should be contacted and asked to give their comments. After this the project plan will be revised and the comments inserted. Then the Board will take decisions on budget and funding, and on the project group.
• The Board decided that a motion from the Annual meeting on the management of Probitas’ apartments has been addressed with the text that is now on the church website.
Reports
The Communication and Collection sub-committee: The autumn church fee campaign has been completed and we have registered about thirty new donors, plus those who signed up digitally. We will get the exact number of new donors from the Uniting Church at the end of January. As usual there was great activity in the International fellowship and we are glad to note that there are many new donors in the Portuguese/Spanish fellowship.
The Personnel sub-committee reported that there are currently 13 applications for the two communication positions. Some of these are applications that would like to combine the two positions. The sub-committee is also working on designing a profile for the position as lead pastor for the Swedish fellowship. As an interim solution already exists, the sub-committee wants to take the time needed to find the right way in this matter.
The discussion day with Board and Councils: A report will come soon!The next Board meeting will be on 12 December, 2018. In this meeting, the budget for 2019 will be decided.
Congregational meetings will be held on 13 January, 24 February and 7 April 2019.