Our Vestry met on Wednesday, November 16th for its monthly meeting. The minutes for the meeting will be filed and available for your review.
The meeting started with a presentation from Martha Cotter, Director of the Community Music School of the Piedmont (CMSP). If you don’t know, CMSP uses the basement of Trinity during the week as their World Headquarters. The school was founded in 1994 and moved into Trinity in 2002. Trinity’s partnership with CMSP provides us the opportunity to extend our outreach ministry through music education across the counties of Loudoun, Fauquier, Frederick and Clark. In 2017, the CMSP will celebrate 15 years at Trinity. You can find additional information at www.piedmontmusic.org.
We received the regular Treasurer’s reports. I am glad to report that our pledge income for October exceeded the budget which is good since we were running behind for the year. The pledge collections for the year were at 80.4%. Vestry is counting on you and everyone to complete their pledge commitments for 2016. This is critical as we seek to fulfill our obligations and end 2016 successfully.
Finance committee recommended to Vestry that we increase our 2017 pledge to the Diocese of Virginia by the same 1.05% COLA increase we applied to our staff compensation. This was passed and will be reflected in the 2017 budget. Vestry was presented with an initial draft version of the 2017 budget that included 100% of the budget requests received by the Treasurer. The Finance committee will present a provisional 2017 budget to Vestry at the December meeting and then the final 2017 budget will be approved in January. We will have a congregational meeting in January to present the budget after it is approved.
Next we heard from our Stewardship chairman. While we are making progress on our 2017 pledges, we still have to make progress in order to reach our goal of 100% participation. To those who have pledged already, we thank you and we encourage you to talk to others at Trinity about your decision. We will be having our first in-gathering of pledges during the services on Dec 4th as we prepare to offer our treasure, talent and time to carry out the mission of Jesus Christ. If you have not already made your pledge, please bring your pledge card that Sunday.
We received the Trinity Christmas Auction update next. This is going to be a wonderful event and we hope that you and your family will join us and bring a friend too! Please join us for the preview party on Friday December 2nd and again for the live auction on Sunday, December 4th. The funds raised from the auction support the current year’s budget in fulfilling our mission and ministry goals.
Stable Tour planning is well underway. If you can help with this important event that supports Trinity’s Mission efforts, please let us know. We will need as much help as we can get so please don’t be afraid to raise your hand. This year’s tour will be led by Kat Gemmer who has an enthusiastic support group including several of our former Stable Tour leaders.
As if that’s not enough for one meeting, we then spent a significant amount of time continuing the discussion we started at the October retreat. We are working hard to develop new Vestry goals for 2017 and our discussions to that end included continued efforts to encourage ownership of our place, advancement of our missions and deepening of our faith. It is Vestry’s intent to present our 2017 goals at the congregational meeting in January.
Your Vestry is committed to developing ideas and actions that will enhance the Faith, Place and Mission of Trinity Upperville. As we continue this journey, please let us know where you want to be included.
In faith, Jim Gemmer, Senior Warden