By Hayley Beckett on 30th September 2024
EBA Council Summary 23 September 2024
EBA Trustees – with two apologies – met for the EBA Council meeting on 23 September 2024.
Andrew Wade (EBA Moderator) welcomed everyone. In opening the meeting Andrew read from Revelation 3 reflecting what it means to be hot in our relationship with God and what that looks like in our ministry with EBA and then he opened in prayer.
Council was brought up to date with 3 outstanding matters from previous meetings, which included an update on the group reflecting on regional minister appointment processes across the Union, how the regional team have created opportunities for churches and ministers to engage with the recommendations from the Project Violet research and the response from EBA to the recommendations for associations and a recent meeting of the EBA Justice Hub.
Hayley Beckett (EBA Company Secretary) brought the Governance Report which highlighted the gaps we currently have these include, co-options for trustees and representatives on BMS council of reference.
Council was presented and subsequently approved updates to the Association Safeguarding Policy, Data Protection Policy and the Complaint Procedure (all these documents can be found on the EBA Website).
Council unanimously approved resolutions related to the sale of one of EBA’s properties that is now vacant. Finally, discussions were had over the timing and date of the AGM 2025 – more details will follow about this in due course.
David Mayne (RMTL) Presented the team report, the regional ministers have all been out and about visiting churches and ministers. Also reported to council was the cancellation of the retired Baptist Ministers Conference due to lack of bookings, alternative ways to connect with our retired ministers will be looked at in the future.
Richard Lewis (EBA Treasurer) presented the financial position for the first 8 months of 2024 remarking that the picture is as forecast – a deficit of £83,000 but just because we are not surprised by the figures does not take away the seriousness of the situation currently find ourselves in – decreasing income and increasing expenditure.
The next report came following the initial draft of bringing in the recommendations of the Grant sustainability and resilience report. This initial draft raises some significant questions and actions that in order to be implemented well need more time and thought. Council agreed that deferring the implementation date would be wise and will ask the grant committee to work on these issues. Alongside this the grant application process for 2026 for those already in the system will be slightly different and this will be communicated to receivers later this year.
Vicky Baker (Safeguarding Trustee) presented the report from Gillian Jones (EBA Safeguarding Lead). Gillian had run a DPS training day earlier in September which had been very well received by those that came and it is hoped will be repeated in other areas of the association.
David Mayne (RMTL) was invited to speak introducing proposed changes to the association, this item is in its early stages and wider consultation will be sought before making final decisions. The proposals introduced included
These initial ideas will be shared with those who attend the AGM tomorrow with a more detailed paper coming to council in November.
Our final item of the evening was to report that all three advertised posts had been filled and all will start on 1st October, Vicky Baker has been appointed to the CYF role, Chris Duffett has been appointed as the Pioneer Networker, Gina Cox and Sharon Chan are doing a job share for the Eco Church enabler role.
Over the summer all current team members had had an annual review and specific discussions of these will be worked through by council
Thanks were given to Ben Plant, Vicky Baker and Andrew Wade whose terms serving as EBA Trustees were coming to an end.
The meeting closed in prayer.
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