Constitution changes and vote

Christ the Good Shepherd, as a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), is governed by a constitution, bylaws and continuing resolutions. Every three years the ELCA holds a Churchwide Assembly where among the business presented to the delegates are recommended updates to the ELCA's model constitution. Each congregation is then responsible to reflect the changes in their constitutions. At CGS we haven't been so good at keeping up on the constitution updates. In fact, from what we can determine, it has been at least a decade. That's a lot of changes to incorporate!
Thanks to the diligent work of Pastor Manda, Chelsea Byom and Petra Menard, we have several updates to our CGS Constitution that were approved for adoption by the CGS Council at its November Meeting.  
At our Annual Congregational Meeting on Sunday, January 27 one of the agenda items is to update the CGS Constitution. We're focusing on adopting the ELCA Model Constitution verbatim to get us caught up before the next Churchwide Assembly, which is in August 2019. 
Here are a few things about the proposed updated constitution:
· The 3 separate documents (Constitution, Bylaws and Continuing Resolutions) were consolidated into one document.
· Clarified and corrected our numbering of several items.
· Added Model Constitution language adopted by the Churchwide Assembly on Diaconal Ministers.
· Updated some details about committees to reflect current ministries at CGS.
I encourage you to take time over the next month to read through all the proposed changes to our Constitution. If you have any questions, please reach out to any Council Member. 
You can find the proposed updated constitution at www.cgslc.org/important-documents or in hard copy in the Narthex of the church.
On behalf of the Council and in service,
Theo Olson
President, CGS Council