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Identifying Leaders
Rev. Josh Patty
Regional Minister & President
I’m happy to share that our Operations Council has approved updated bylaws for our region. I’m confident that these updated bylaws will strengthen our Disciples Together ministry.
In the coming weeks, I’ll share various aspects of the revised bylaws. This month, I’ll share a time-sensitive piece – how we will identify and elect our regional leaders.
As those of you who participated in the Visioning Together sessions may remember, we were having more difficulty filling our leadership positions; in fact, about a third of them are currently vacant. We have reimagined our process. Going forward, we will have an elected nominating committee whose purpose is to identify candidates for all elected regional positions: officers, board members, and nominating committee members.
We need your help to share some nominations with the Provisional Nominating Committee that will be created by our current Operations Council. You are free to volunteer yourself or suggest another leader you believe would be excellent at one of these tasks. Please share the nominations with me by email and put “Nomination” in the subject line. All elected positions are for 3-year terms.
Officers are: Moderator (presides at meetings; has legal authority of Chair of the Board; convenes visioning team); Vice Moderator (presides in absence of Moderator; convenes team that plans regional gatherings); Moderator Elect (presumed to be elected next Moderator and convenes Mission and Ministry team), Treasurer (financial officer for region; convenes Finance/Grants team); and Secretary (takes minutes and keeps records of business sessions/meetings; convenes Communication team). These officers will be part of the Executive Team with the Regional Minister and also serve on the Regional Board.
Regional Board at-large members will help the board with specific functions: serving as legal entity of our regional church; overseeing regional finances; assuring that ministry priorities of the region are carried out; receiving reports of region’s ministries, teams, and staff. In addition, each member will serve on one working committee of the board: Visioning, Mission and Ministry, Communication, Regional Gatherings, or Finance/Grants.
Regional Nominating Committee members are tasked with identifying leaders for regional positions and preparing nomination slates each year. These people will have a commitment to identifying leaders who have a diversity of geography, age, gender, ethnicity, clergy/lay, etc.
Does anyone come to mind as you read these various descriptions? Is there someone who can strengthen our shared Disciples Together ministry in one of these roles? Again, please share nominations with me.
(Rest assured, I’ve just condensed a great deal of information into a pretty short space. You’ll likely notice some additions and changes from our previous bylaws. I promise that we’ll explore those more deeply in the weeks ahead. For now, though, we need to identify the leaders who will stand for election at the All Congregation Gathering October 19.)
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