Congregational Meeting January 23, 2011
Please mark your new 2011 calendar and save the date for the first Congregational Meeting of 2011. We will meet after the second service and receive a report from the Ministerial Search Committee and the Membership Committee. We will also be voting on our bylaws. As you have heard, the bylaws have received an overhaul to better reflect our mission and work. Over the years, the TJMC-UU bylaws had become cumbersome, increasingly including policies that did not need to be there. Just to be clear, here are the definitions we are working with.
- Bylaws are the formal, written legal documentation of the organization which grant certain powers, authority, and responsibilities. They are statements which define the institutional entity, the governance requirements, and the duties of the elected officials and the members of the congregation.
- Policies are the rules by which the Bylaws are carried out to reflect the implicit values and to clarify what is done in the organization. They are statements which define a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes.
- Procedures are the guidelines which define the steps by which a policy goal is fulfilled. They specify what is actually done and sometimes identify who is responsible of the action.
The work on the bylaws included the removal of policies and procedures. The policies and procedures have been included in an updated version of the TJMC Policy Manual. Please know that there were only minor editorial changes in the bylaws and the intent of all the bylaws remain the same. One important note, per the Membership Committee Report to the Board, there is no change in the bylaws regarding membership requirements. The Board of Trustees fully endorsed the newest version of the bylaws at the December 9, 2010 meeting. The updated Policy Manual was also approved at this meeting. It is my intent to make sure the updated bylaws and policy manual are available for you to review online and in the Church Office. I encourage you to contact me if you have any specific questions about these changes. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, my sincere and heartfelt thanks to Jean Shepard and Betty Warner for all the work you did to transform the bylaws into an efficient and useful document.