Dear congregation,
Your board has been hard at work on your behalf. We started the year off with a retreat in which we selected three goals for the year
- Get our finances in order
- Work on a plan for our building
- Revise our vision, mission, and covenant
We are making progress on these goals. We hired an accountant to help us move our accounts from ICON to Quickbooks and close out the last fiscal year. They also helped set up this fiscal year so that a bookkeeper will be able to enter our information quickly and easily. We hope to have the 2021-22 fiscal year closed out shortly and then will turn to getting all the data entered and up to date for 2022-23. Our goal is to have financial reports once again available on our website by early 2023. We will be starting the hiring process for a part-time bookkeeper and a part-time office administrator in January and saying goodbye to Libby as she moves on to her next endeavor.
We have convened a Building Committee that is simultaneously exploring what it would take to make our current building more functional and looking at other building options. They are looking into things such as replacing our aging furnaces and windows, installing air conditioning, remodeling our downstairs to make it more functional, and adding bathrooms. In additional to this work, they are also exploring other church buildings on the market right now that might be a fit for our congregation. Once their research is complete, recommendations will come forward to the board, and then to the congregation at a congregational meeting.
Starting in 2023, we will be coming together to talk about who we are as a congregation and who we want to be. The last time we did this work was many years ago. We want to build on the work that was done then and add to it who we are now. We want to speak to the times we are in and who we want to be in our community. I look forward to doing this work in small groups with a facilitator from outside our congregation.
In addition to these formal goals, there are a lot of other happenings. We have re-convened the Membership Committee and are happy to report that attendance is up and we have several new members. We are also seeking to re-convene the Religious Exploration Committee and are looking for someone to be the convener of this group. If you are interested in helping to work to get our children’s RE program back up and running, please contact me at board@tahomauu.com
It has been great to see so many of you in the sanctuary and online. I have enjoyed getting to know more of you and look forward to meeting even more of you. If you want to be more involved and share a talent you have with the congregation, please don’t hesitate to reach out. The same is true if I can be of service.
Take good care,
Krissy Kim, on behalf of your Board of Trustees