The Glen Waverley Uniting Church Congregation

Congregation data

Presbytery classification

The Presbytery codes for our congregation are:

Giving to Glen Waverley UCA

See GivingToGlenWaverleyUCA including banking details.

Statistical data

See CongregationData

Membership Rules

See ChurchMembership

Call for Engagement and Leadership

This page under construction: ChurchInvolvement

Congregational Meetings

The congregation meets in council about 4 times a year, to discuss matters of import to the whole church at Glen Waverley, and to receive reports and decide upon key issues. There are a number of Key Dates to observe (but see also below).

Minutes of past meetings of the Congregation can be found at CongregationMeetingReports page.

UCA rules and GWUC conventions governing church meetings and roles of officers can be found at CongregationMeetingRulesRoles.

Forms for the running of Congregational meetings and elections can be found on the CongregationalForms page.

Ideas for discussion at Congregational Meetings are suggested at CongregationalIdeasForStudy.

Timing of Congregational Meetings

At its meeting on 17 Mar 2010 (CouncilMinutes20100317), Council agreed to the following:

(This followed some recorded discussion regarding the proposal, see the CongregationalMeetingsDiscussion page.)

For the next five years, these are the nominated dates:

It should be noted that these are nominated dates, subject to modification by the Chair and secretary of the Congregation, who have the Constitutional responsibility to call meetings. In particular, the timing of meetings has been the subject of subsequent discussions.

Timing of Congregational Meetings (Update July 2014)

A proposal was raised at the November 2013 meeting to move the meeting time to one that is more accessible to more members of the congregation. This was determined to be following a 10:00am combined worship service. In 2014, these service dates have become more flexible and so the dates shown above may not be achieved.

It is intended to continue with the Sunday meetings unless the majority of the congregation wish to change.

Broadly the dates will remain the same (March/July/November) in that there will be 3 meetings per year (unless an additional meeting is required) and the focus of these meetings will be as shown above, however they will be coordinated with the ministry team and preaching plan.

WarrenGreenwood
Congregational Chairperson

Timing of Congregational Meetings (Update October 2014)

Recent Community minutes have highlighted that some people do not understand the decision to only have one or two Communities or functions report at each Congregatinal meeting, and that these reports need to be comprehensive and forward looking. This arose as some members of the congregation expressed concern that too often these reports were just a repeat of what was in the weekly bulletin, Newview, on noticeboards and announced from the pulpit, and they asked for the process to be improved.

Further, there were comments in these minutes about the timing of Congregational meetings. The following comments are to help members of the congregation to better understand what was intended by these changes.

First and foremost, ALL Communites are welcome and encouraged to provide a written report to every congregational meeting. If there are matters in that report of concern to members of the congregation they can and will be discussed in General Business if they are not covered elsewhere in the meeting.

If however, there are any decisions required by the congregation on matters under the responsibilities of any Community, as they should have gone to Church Council first, the item and decison can form part of the Church Council report/presentation. If there is urgent business (not advertising of an event) that has not gone to Church Council, this can also be raised in any and every meeting.

What this means is that Communites can bring matters of importance to every Congregatinal meeting, but it is intended that it NOT be matters of advertising and event. If communites want to make their information further available to the congregation, every Community has a notice board provided and copies of their monthly minutes (with confidential information removed) can be displayed on their noticeboards. This will help keep the noticeboards fresh and interesting.

As to the timing of Congregational meetings, the feedback received was on two issues. Meetings were too long and why are they always at the same time, as this often prevents the same people from attending.

To enhance the inclusive nature of Congregational meetings, we are trying different meeting structures and different times to see if we can improve attendance and participation. This is the reason the November 2014 meeting is on a Sunday at 1:30pm, as the discussion is key to the future of GWUC and we want to try and maximise attendance.

I am more than happy to receive comments on these changes, but I ask people to give the changes an opportunity to work, and to respect that some members of our congregation have not felt past meetings were inclusive, they went far too long, and there was not a lot of participation.

WarrenGreenwood
Congregational Chairperson

CategoryCongregation