Annual Meetings

I was doing better at blogging more consistently... and then Annual Meeting Season got in the way. I know, for most of my pastor buddies this is a one-time event; but here it becomes a season, like Advent or Epiphany.

So, I've been preparing:

• Encouraging parish leadership to consider their work in the last year, and to write up summaries of that work for presentation to the parish.
• Getting pledge records complete, and budgets ready and approved by vestries for presentation to the parish (the treasurers actually do this; I just monitor the process).
  
• Working with said leadership to select nominees for vestry positions (in the smaller churches, this often means making sure that someone is willing to continue. "You can still do this, right?"). We also elect delegates to diocesan convention.
• Going over an agenda with the Senior Warden, to make sure we've got it all.
• Going through parish records, looking at the numbers from the last year-- how many services, weddings, funerals, and attendance thereto.

Without a parish secretary. TIMES FOUR.

Lord, have mercy. And remind me again, how much I love these people.