Questions and Responses Regarding
Contemporary

• Will the congregation be given an opportunity to express their concerns? Yes, of course. As soon as the Church Council has a recommendation and further clarify in their discernment process, we will seek further input from the congregation. Our church governs itself by a Church Council in a representative form of governance, and the membership of the church has full access to the council members. The list of Council members present at the last meeting is printed with the minutes of the May meeting.
• Why should a new service disrupt our present worship schedule? We believe it is imperative to have the contemporary service as a part of the Sunday morning schedule. This is based on research that says un-churches folks are more likely to attend a service on Sunday morning than any other time of the week. 32% of the Chippewa Valley doesn’t attend church, and another 35% attend less than four times per year. In order to provide two traditional venues each week on Sunday morning, as well as add this third venue, we believe the worship schedule would need to be altered. I would suspect in the life of the congregation this won’t be the first time there has been a worship schedule change nor will it be the last. In fact, we changed the schedule last summer and had good results with bringing our 9:00 and 10:30 am service to 9:30 am. After speaking with the music staff, the majority felt they would have adequate time to rehearse with a schedule that was 8:30, 9:45, and 11:15 am. A schedule change does cause upheaval, but we hope what we gain will far outweigh the temporary strain of the adjustment.
• Why not add a contemporary service at 10:30 or 11:00 am? We believe having the service concurrent with one of our traditional service will cause folks to have to decide between worship and Sunday School, between Traditional and Contemporary. With our proposed schedule, families can go to worship in a traditional service and then to Sunday school, or come from Sunday school and go to the contemporary service. We also believe that parking will be an issue as both of our venues grow.
• Can the church financially support the capital and operations needed for this service? At this juncture, we will need only to add staff support to coordinate the music. We believe we have someone willing to help with this at a very reasonable cost. There are funds available through the Foundation to offset some of this for 2005, but we will need to budget for it in 2006. We believe that growth in membership will offset the cost for the new venue. Most of the capital expenses will be covered in the Capital Campaign that is coming in February 2006.

Updated on 5/30/2005
email:  Leonard Larsen