In April, once again, your Church Council took time to reflect on the ministries, the missions and programs of CUMC.  We invested a Sunday afternoon and Monday evening in exercises to ponder our current successes and pray and vision about the future.

Sometimes members of the council hear things like: “We don’t really know what the Council is doing!”  Your Church Council would like to include everyone in the loop of communication and energy.  So, we are sharing this bullet-point message about our April meetings.

We began by celebrating some of the accomplishments of the past 12-24 months:

· Hiring a full-time Children’s Ministry Pastor (Ginny  Allison was serving 30 hr/wk at the time and now is 40 hr/week as of June 18.

· Successes with hospitality.

· Worship discernment process that encouraged us to continue the current path with 5 worship services each Sunday morning.

· Music ministry budget grew by $10,000.

· New Music Ministry Associate hired (Mina Keohane).

· New Youth Pastor hired (Scott McDermid).

· Youth Worship began      (1-15-06) and currently averages 50+ youth each Sunday in the Youth     Center.

· Small Group ministry continues with 2 major studies each year and 20+ small groups.

· Faith, Hope & Love community outreach mission with other church families in Carmel.

· Growing Endowment with addition of over $550,000 in the last 2½ years, and an Endowment Celebration Sunday under the leadership of Pat Duginske in May 2007.

Visioning Priorities:

· Focus on Children as a Specific Concrete Missional Objective.

· Continue to strengthen hospitality efforts.

· Continue to develop and expand music ministry

· Build youth leadership

· Continue development of small group ministry

· Initiate more activities in community service

· Continue to develop endowment

· Establish a young adult ministry

· STREAM marketing and development

Your Church Council works very hard.  These are leaders that represent you as the church family seeks to discern God’s direction for ministry and mission in our community, our state, nation and world.  Please pray for your Church Council members as they seek to be effective leaders of Carmel United Methodist Church! You are always welcome to our bimonthly meetings- 3rd Monday of each odd numbered month at 7:00 pm!