Moderator Report
December
2025
This report is robust again and per the
session’s desire was not sent out in advance.
I continue to link earlier reports for more context. We do have some
action items to accomplish at this meeting and I have engaged a prayer plan
that I hope gets us to there.
Seek Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly
with your God. Micah
6:8
Missions. We helped 11 families with
Thanksgiving Baskets and additional food, since school was out for a week for
Thanksgiving Break. We helped about 25
other families with healthy portions of food in November. We are giving out
Christmas Baskets plus extra food (two-week school break) for the next few
days. We are blessed to be a blessing. One family was helped with food while I
was away. This was a continuation of an existing relationship.
I held a
Holy Fun evening on 17 December to get as many as were interested in some of
the grunt work of food sorting. We also made made a dozen blessing bags.
On a looking
forward note, the missions committee has been mostly the Spence family over the
past few years. I have lost a couple of family members who were active in the
committee. During my time here, we had as many as 9 or 10 members on this committee
at one time. These were mostly new joins (Wascom, Hose, & Westreicher). Don
Foust and Tom Collins would participate from time to time, but we haven’t had
others interested. The Kiser and Rush families are often involved in mission
work (as well as other areas). Newton Lockwood was on my mind and in my heart
about possibly restarting the committee. I have asked him and some others to
pray about this and not get back with me. I asked them to talk to the
session after the New Year if they believe God is calling them to this.
I suggest a new
reconstitution effort in 2026. I don’t want to initiate this with someone and
then not be there to mentor, so the Spences will be the committee for the rest
of the year. I hope you don’t let our missions work atrophy going forward.
There is currently some genuine fidelity between our motto and our actions,
especially in our truth-in-love approach to outreach.
Worship. We are more aware and active in the
Special Music area. God is working in our local churches (offline narrative
post Community Service).
Education. The quarterly Sunday School Report
is due at January’s session meeting (Rodney). Fran Kiser said that she would
take Sharman’s class for F-4 in 2026.
Building
and Grounds. The
easternmost front door is fixed. The heat was fixed prior to the 30 November
Service and the cold front, so no special mitigation was required. Thanks to
Phil and Ethan for pressing on through multiple challenges.
I purchased space
heaters as a contingency plan in case we don't get the heat on in time, to
avoid draining the sprinkler system. The heat was fixed before the first major
cold front. The space heaters helped maintain the building's overall
temperature but did not require emergency employment. They made about a seven-degree
difference in the northern rooms when the outside temperature was in the mid-twenties. The heat was fixed (thankfully) before the
heaters were put to the test. God, your grace is enough, but all the same,
thanks that we didn’t turn the fellowship hall into a skating rink.
Please don’t
spray the area around the outside cross or the northeast corner of the
building. I sowed no-mow clover on the NE corner of the church building (so I
would have results for the north and east side). I won’t go into the factors
that led to my assessment, but the no-mow would be the best solution for the
northern part, which is just a weed factory/tar-and-gravel repository that
seems to have grown immune to Roundup. I suggest Visqueen and gravel without
interspersed vegetation if the no-mow is a no-go. You probably won’t know until
early March 2026. The east side of the
building needs to be painted. It has fewer coats of paint than the rest of the
building. The north side could use some touch-up.
This might be a good spring project for a few people with no fear of getting
paint in their hair. The west side differs in that it has lettering to work
around, which may take a little more skill. The rest of the building might be a
good opportunity for our youth to serve, with pizza, of course. I don’t want to
ask the youth to do everything but while they are in this teachable spirit
mode, I hope they discover the joy of fellowship in service.
We older
folks experienced this with workdays bringing an old grocery store into the
Reformed Tradition. I would like them to catch he idiom of fellowship in the
course of outreach and evangelism.
And I don’t
want them to think they can outgrow these things. Fellowship is enriched in
common purpose and projects that sometimes include walking, painting, digging
in the dirt, helping a shut in and so much more. Fellowship lies in inclusion. Abundant
life lies in inclusion. If we don’t bring up our youth to understand this sort
of fellowship, we are just filling the seats at the country club.
Also, on the
north side of the building, there is a pipe/conduit for wiring that has lost
its integrity. The wires are contained and shielded, but the encasing has
broken and is sagging. Phil said that the power company would have to fix that.
In the minor
but growing category, there has been an onslaught of spit cups left adrift in
the building. I am accustomed to picking up Styrofoam water cups on Monday and
Thursday mornings, as well as those I found later stashed for later use or
reasons unknown. Water cups are mostly carelessness and complacency. We don’t
need to hide Styrofoam cups for later use. We have plastic and ceramic cups and
glasses and I usually wash a load early Sunday afternoons. That’s the
stewardship part. Spit cups move us a notch towards disrespecting others who
share the same spaces.
On a
positive note, Libby Spence worked cleaning and organizing the attic. On one
occasion, Avery Simmons helped her. The attic is a never-ending project but it
is less of a fire hazard and a little better organized.
On an FYI
storeroom note. I have been the watchdog of the electrical panels through these
past years. I marked the area in front of them so it would not be fouled.
Someone should pick up this oversight. People have a tendency to leave whatever
they want to store there anywhere in the room. Also, a recurring check on the
freezer is advisable as I have cleaned up rotten meat on three occasions over
the years when the door was left ajar.
Fellowship. We had a very good turnout for our
evening Thanksgiving service and meal. We also had Finger Food Fellowship on 14
December 2025, following the Christmas Service. This was the Christmas Team’s
turn. As an exception to not repeating previously noted information, I remind
your that the fellowship team list has been consolidated into two main teams:
Team A and Team B.
Financial. There was an apparent spike
in Local Help spending for November. There was no actual increase in spending;
instead, what would have spread across November-December was expended in
November to meet my discontinuation as the church's primary purchasing agent in
this area. This was to ready me for departure and give you a month to institute
how you will address spending for missions and local benevolence. As Ethan has
come on as a co-treasurer/assistant treasurer, this might be a good time to
introduce two minor and simple modifications: A transfer line and the
use of charge and credit on the expense line. Both would preclude
routing these via offering (income lines) so as not to have to take a
circuitous route to accuracy on our annual report, as well as the
transparency/accountability expected in today’s scrutiny. This transparency is
the main reason we are adding a second treasurer, and we should consider other
known matters at the same time.
But it is integrity,
more than transparency, that prompts these requests from me. Our current accounting
method requires session members to approve falsified reports with every
transfer of funds routed via an offering line. I correct the numbers for the
annual report, but they don’t add up without this off-the-books adjustment.
So, if I
adjust the report for the senior judicatories, what’s the problem? These
judicatories are not the primary target for these reports. The primary
audience for this report is our own people—those who gave and
trusted that the elders of the church would exercise both integrity and
stewardship.
Up to this
point this has been on me. As the moderator, I could have denied the motion to
receive the report at any point after I learned it was false. I didn’t. I had
hoped that the minor corrections required on the report would have been
adjusted at some point. That didn’t happen. That’s on me. What I thought was
patience and compassion on my part (the treasurer in any congregation carries
some big burdens and could use a little slack from time to time) was, in fact,
poor judgment. That’s on me.
I have done
this before in many situations as a commander. Having the authority to do what
was necessary, I often opted to give the individual time to remedy the dereliction.
Leaders must allow room for mistakes. Organizations that don’t effectively eat
their own young and grow few leaders and specialists.
I have no
command authority here, but was willing to receive the risk of the derelictions
until we got it right. That didn’t happen. Going forward, the integrity of the
report is on you, at least in the short term. This must be fixed immediately.
We should discuss how much in arrears the corrections should extend.
Integrity
matters to me much more than the perception of transparency. If you wonder why
I can’t let this go, there is no such thing as a little integrity or absolute integrity
or a hint of integrity. It’s just complete—that’s the essence of integrity.
There are no degrees. I hope you see the dichotomy that should result in dissonance
here. Bringing on a second treasurer to enhance accountability and transparency
doesn’t make sense if we (you) intend to continue falsifying and approving
financial reports.
I am amazed at
the level of resistance to this. In fact, I know we are already defeated in
this if integrtity and fidelity must be explained and elders convinced of the
importance of practicing fidelity. Consider your personal finances. I suspect that
everyone currently serving on the session has at least two accounts. Do you
report a transfer of funds as income to the IRS? Of course not. That would be ridiculous.
While we
don’t report our income to the IRS; we are telling our own people that we
received more offering than we did. The deception
delta hasn’t been much (SWAG $25-50K over the past 15 years) compared to total
income (constructive), but how much rat poop do you want in your cookies? These
are the people who elected you to the office of elder. They put their trust in
you.
You might
think I am making a mountain out of a molehill. If you do, try this exercise
before you make your final assessment. When you get home from this meeting,
tell your spouse that you have been mostly faithful in your relationship. There
were one or two minor indiscretions this year, but not enough to matter. A
slice off a cut loaf is never missed. We will just ignore them, and nobody
will know the difference. It will all come out in the wash.
If they are
good with this, then I’m spitting in the wind.
If you
choose to address these matters, you might want to maintain the momentum and
see whether Ethan is up to the task of managing an employee’s payment
requirements. This is not a matter of integrity, but efficacy. Urgency is not attached.
Why do it? It might expand the search
committee's candidate pool by up to a third (peer anecdotal SWAG).
In any case,
the integrity
matter must be corrected now.
Other
Pastor
Turnover. We are
just about there. I have Christmas baskets, the final evacuation of my personal
items, and office clean-up remaining. Contract compliance record is posted. I
don’t have to do anything to keep the Facebook page functioning. Both Kathy
Stegall and Rodney Chilton have full administrator privileges. I am in
defensive mode at the moment from being gaslighted, so the discontinue page is
on a hair trigger if I see signs of its migration and continuation online. I will assess the handover of the page again
upon resolution of the integrity and fidelity issue.
Once I know
the transition is smooth, I will step down as an administrator and figure out
how to remove myself completely. Better yet, you may just want to start a new
page now.
Turnovers
always have things to be done early and some to follow. I hope that few fall
into that category. The
sine qua non here are the matters of fidelity and integrity.
The Search
Committee is formed
and is working. A report is due to the session monthly. I would suggest that
quarterly reports to the congregation also be made. The website listed for us
is no longe valid.
Tom
Personal. I will
leave what vanilla is left on a front table or windowsill as my gift to those
in the congregation who like it. I will leave some Olive Oil Peppers in the
refrigerator. If you like the peppers, email me when you run out, and I will
put you on the list for my next batch.
I have
received my final pay and all reimbursement due for funds expended on behalf of
the church. The only outstanding transaction is for the continuation of world
vision child Jesus.
I can’t
stand the acrimony having to address matters that should never surface with
church leaders. With all deliberate
speed, I asked that financials between the Burns Flat CPC and me be reconciled
and finalized forthwith. I think that the gaslighting about my salary could
have been avoided with up front integrity, but that is in the past and what
remains is a setting a foundation for a good solid start for whomever is next.
My copy of
the PO Box 8, Burns Flat, OK key has been surrendered to the session clerk during
this meeting.
I ask that
such reconciliation be recorded in the minutes of this session meeting
and verified in the final reading of the minutes. I would have preferred a
reconciliation in whole, in the Spirit, in total harmony. I’ll take the
transactional part and move on to that which the Lord has put before me, of
which this body was to have benefitted. The body of Christ is at work all
around you and I have no doubt will receive the fruit.
The following attachments require session
action.
Moderator
Report #2: World Vision Transition
Moderator
Report #3: Furniture Disposition
Moderator
Report #4: Fund
Administrator Closeouts.
·
Local
Help
·
Baskets
·
Worship
Supplies
The
following attachments are for consideration without recommendations contained
within. Documents for this meeting are not yet posted.
Links to information not included in the report.
Projects
in Search of a Champion.
Unto
Everything There is a Season
Basic
Fix for Treasurer’s Report (Restoring Fidelity)
Red
River Presbytery Facebook page
