Report on Annual General Meeting Sept. 17, 2017

We had a successful AGM in Scranton on Sunday. All six of the candidates on the slate were elected, so welcome to new board members Clara Chung, Ron Crane, Fr. Bernard Sixtus, Christopher Mahon and David Burt.  And welcome back, Joe Blake, for another term.  Thank you to all who participated in the election.

Following the AGM, we had a board meeting to elect new officers.   The new board officers are:

President:   Deborah Gyapong

Vice President:  Clara Chung

Treasurer:   Joe Blake

Secretary:  Christopher Mahon

Webmaster:   Shane Schaetzel

We divided up the Secretary position.   Christopher Mahon will serve as the secretary for our board and executive committee meetings, taking the minutes and keeping those records.   David Burt, as the previous secretary, also took care of keeping track of our membership list.  I have decided to take that on, and will be seeking some volunteers to help me.   I hope to have a membership committee set up, so we can mount a membership drive.

If any members would like me to send them the minutes of the AGM plus attachments containing the various reports, I would be happy to do so. 

Shane automated the membership portion of website in July so that when one joins the Society now, one takes out a subscription that will be taken out annually, unless the subscriber/member decides to cancel the membership, or their credit card information changes.  As it stands now, I will have to follow up on each individual membership to ensure it is renewed, which is time consuming.    It’s important for us to get our membership list under control and automated, because we soon hope to offer some services on our website that will be available to members only.

Another thing we did on Sunday, was strike the beginning of a music committee, with Clara Chung and Christopher Mahon as the first members.   But we will be seeking additional members to help out on this.   We plan to have a music page or pages on the website that will perhaps have samples of how various settings of the Gloria, or the Angus Dei, for example, are sung.   Perhaps some instruction on how to properly chant the Gospel, or sing Anglican plainsong or chant.  This will start modestly, but we hope, as the Society grows, we will be able to do some instructional videos to help our people discover, preserve and pass on Anglican patrimony.   We’ll also see whether some communities might be willing to share their upcoming bulletins so that other communities don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel but can use some of the good ideas out there as templates.

If you are interested in helping out on any of these projects or would like to suggest something you’d like to see the Society do, please let me know.

That’s it for now,

Deborah Gyapong