Annual Meeting Sunday

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Along with our usual time for music and prayer, we’re hosting our annual meeting (instead of a message) — a time for updates and questions about the financial side of running our church. All are welcome, whether you consider yourself a stakeholder in BLC or you’re just curious how this church does “family conversations”.

SPEAKER NOTES

Annual Meeting Sunday

Intro

Here's what we're doing today...

  • This is our annual meeting for stakeholders,
    • When we talk about the business and financial side of running this church
    • This is instead of our usual message this weekend. (Forgive us for being a little more self-referential than usual!)
  • If you identify as a stakeholder in this church, you’ll have a chance before we’re done this morning to opt-in to our official stakeholder roll for 2025.
  • If you’re wondering what a stakeholder is...
    • We don’t have traditional membership here at BLC, in that we don't ask people to sign on to eternal agreement with a statement of faith.
    • BUT we do have the self-identified role of stakeholder, which we update yearly
    • if you feel invested in the project and vision of this community — for the sake of your own experience and the experiences of others — then you’re a stakeholder!
  • If you’re not sure if you identify as a stakeholder (or you know you don’t, because you’re just a guest this morning)...
    • No problem! We’re so glad you’re here!
    • We think sitting in on a community’s family discussion can be a really good way to get to know that community.

Agenda (Jen)

(Pass out statement of activity)

Visual

  1. Financial snapshot
  2. Neighboring report
  3. Response to 2020-2025 Five Year Plan
  4. New 2025-2030 Five Year Plan
  5. Q&R
  6. Stakeholder opt-in/vote

Financial Snapshot

Visual

Statement of activity thru October is being passed out, and also a link to that is being dropped in Discord

  • General income: $112,637
  • General expenses: $117,231
  • Difference: (-4,584)
  • General Fund in bank: $12,893
  • Variance: +2,518
    • (so negative difference is not unexpected; we approved that, and we’re doing better than we thought)

Our dream budget for 2026 would be raising our monthly income by 800/month by the end of the year.

Neighboring report

(Invite Kids up with Christina)

(Pass out Five Year Plans page)

We’re passing out a sheet now with our previous Five Year Plan and our new Five Year Plan (also a link in Discord).

Previous Five year plan (2020-2025)

  1. Caring, supportive local & online community
  2. Sunday services of 100+ adults
  3. Woman or POC or both on pastoral staff
  4. Diverse voices on Sundays every month
  5. Age-separated kids/youth Sunday program
  6. Engaged in activism
  7. Connected to larger church/faith network(s) that is(are) not exclusively white-led
  8. A reputation as the inclusive, progressive church known for: (1) spiritual growth and (2) a healthy sense of humor and humility

Response

  • Overall, I feel really good about where we are in relation to this vision from 5 years ago
    • the ones that are measurable checkboxes are mostly ticked off
    • and the ones that are more pursuits to keep at, we are clearly pursuing them
  • In this time period we…
    • Grew from 80 active adults to 105 active adults, from an in-person + online average of 57/Sun to 63/Sun
      • 30% growth in total adults connected
      • 11% growth in Sunday attendance
    • Successfully adopted Discord as a digital living room for our decentralized community
    • Hired Hayley on pastoral staff
    • Put more of our community’s diverse voices on stage and in teaching roles in small groups than in any other stretch in our history
    • Began age-separated kids/youth programming
    • Joined and increased in partnership with ONE Northside, community organizers for economic and social justice on the Northside of Chicago (11 of us were at their town hall last week).
    • Took half a dozen people through Vanderbilt University’s Religion & Justice program, Solidarity Circles, teaching broad-based community organizing basics to faith communities, and formalized our church Solidarity Team, focused on helping our church contribute to an alternative economy that works for all not just the few on top.
    • Did not formally connect with any larger church/faith networks, but a lot of the reason is because that whole landscape is changing — formal denominational networking is declining in priority, and informal networking is increasing in priority (meet-ups of leaders who listen to the same podcasts for example). So our affiliation future is still TBD; we’re staying unaffiliated for now. But we DID increase our informal connections with various inter-denominational groups of other clergy, churches, and Progressive Christians (both local and virtual), that are not exclusively led by straight, white, male voices (in addition to our networking with community organizing groups).
    • Can demonstrate we increased our reputation as an inclusive, progressive church known for a healthy sense of humor and humility and teaching mature spirituality. 70% of new connections to our church this year have cited finding us online (usually searching for “progressive church” near me).
  • One last thing not part of the 2020 five year plan, but a really good way to capture the movement of this past 5 years —
    • I think we moved through another round of deconstruction and reconstruction as a community.
    • Increasingly, Jesus’ “come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” has become our church’s central scripture, as we try to help people in the burnout and malaise of modern life, where busyness is the concept of a full life — can we foster instead deep, resonant relationships with others, the world, ourselves, and God?
    • We formalized a lot of new consistent rhythms (liturgy as it’s called in a church) around this direction — our weekly prayer of confession, our regular community services like brunches or picnics, our Easter liturgy, our ritual services, our first baptism service in years last summer…
    • The last five years started or solidified all these liturgical rhythms, which are important to the maturing of a community that will stand the test of time.

New 2025-2030 Five Year Plan

Transition

  1. 70 in-person people/Sunday (120-140 adults active)
    • Currently: 50 in-person people/Sunday (100-some adults active)
    • Number we identified in 2020 (100+ adults) were nice round numbers, but a bit arbitrary. Instead we're thinking now about:
      • The realities of a geographically spread out congregation… we’re not all in the same neighborhood; we’re all over the area.
      • Parking in LS on Sunday mornings
      • Congregational “size culture” research (we're in between two common resting places: 40 and 70… I want us to push on to 70 rather than get pulled back to 40… which requires sacrifices like “accepting that none of us can know everyone and everything else going on in the community anymore”... because we're more than one or two circles... we're more than two or three demographics.)
    • I do think growing this amount would make BLC more sustainable and impactful.
  2. Youth confirmation rhythm begun
    • In the next five years we will have our first foray into releasing a "next generation" that “grew up in this church”
    • This has to be a combination of (a) a fun youth group experience, and (b) spiritual formation that leaves kids with a mature picture of the faith they've inherited so that they can begin their young adulthood making informed decisions about their own faith.
  3. Expanded financial & advisory board of at least 8 seats
    • This is a way that we can continue to represent more diverse voices in our leadership even as a small budget non-profit that can't just add paid staff.
  4. A clear footprint organizing for working people
    • The clarity we’ve gained spending the last five years intentionally trying to lean into activism has led to a specific call — organizing for economic justice and economic democracy.
    • Increase our partnership with ONE Northside
    • Increase our partnership with the Solidarity Circles Program, and expanding our own Solidarity Team’s efforts
  5. Contributing at least 1 more good, just job to the economy
    • Part time more likely given our scope, but maybe full time!
    • Could be directly related to church's mission or operations, or could be through a partnership, like with the Davis or with a partner we don't know about yet.
    • The charge here is to use our power, however small, to enact economic justice, not just critique the larger system for its lack of economic justice in our Sunday messages (though rest assured, I'll keep doing that), but we want to actually be in the labor market as a just employer.
  6. Expand our reputation as a progressive community known for loving enemies
    • Adding to a reputation for teaching mature spirituality, and for community with a healthy sense of humor and humility… this is the characteristic I’d love to feel true five years from now: that BLC loves their enemies.
    • Loving enemies is maybe the most distinct teaching of Jesus.
    • And I'm including it here as a way to cast a vision for our next five years given our current political moment.
    • I wonder if we sometimes get the cart before the horse when we talk about healing our country’s political divide.
    • I wonder if we don’t always realize how much our current political moment is actually downstream from our current technological moment.
    • In the world of social media and smart phones in everyone's pockets, we are all in digital echo chambers — we are driven by algorithms that stoke fear and outrage and hatred across our political divide, because that’s what sells ads.
    • I wonder if: BEFORE we can heal our political divide, we have to FIRST, while still stuck in the echo chambers of the moment, teach our own to "love our enemies" like Jesus taught, instead of "hate our enemies", like algorithms teach.
    • That doesn't mean moderating our values to some mushy, uninspiring middle-ground -- it means the hard, ongoing work of choosing to honor and respect the dignity of the other, no matter what, while fighting for what we believe in.
    • To just speak for this church -- we unavoidably exist in mostly-progressive echo chambers. To pretend we are immune to that reality is lying to ourselves.
    • But what if BLC resists the algorithms’ pull to hate our enemies, and follows instead Jesus' call to love our enemies?
    • That’s what I want our reputation to be. That church is powerfully engaged in fighting for what they believe in, they are clear about who their enemies are, not pretending they don’t have any — but they choose to love; they follow Jesus not algorithms.

Q&R | Stakeholder opt-in/vote

Okay, while we have some Question and Response and chance for Feedback, let me direct you to how to opt-in as a stakeholder for 2025, so your name is a part of our official roll.

(Pass out cards and pens) (Also QR Code on screen)

The kids are coming around with cards and pens. Or you can fill out a card electronically following the QR code.

Remember: Everyone re-ups as a stakeholder every year (even Vince and Hayley), so even if you’ve done this before, please sign the card or electronic form!

One of the things on your card is a vote to ratify the appointment of Beth and Trey Fratt to a joint seat on our Financial and Advisory Board.

Beth and Trey, if you would stand --

  • Sometimes appointees to our board are more background players in our church and we do some planned introduction of those folks to everyone so we know who they are,
  • But we hardly have to do any introduction of these two to the community, because they are so naturally intertwined in so many of our lives.
  • If you have not met them, Beth is a part of our prayer team, Trey is a part of our tech team, and they are regularly generous hosts of others in this church.
  • We're grateful already for their addition to our board!

Okay, Q&R...

Prayer (Vince)

Vincent BrackettComment