Jan Gartner  0:05  
Okay, I'm gonna go back to my first slide, because I just turned on the recording how's that? Here we are Jan Gartner from the Office of Church Staff Finances. Here's what we'll be talking about today, our mission. And then in particular, I'm part of the compensation and staffing team depicted in our team logo by this dollar sign. The other areas of our office are going clockwise at the top insurance plans, on the right, our retirement plan, and then at the bottom of the life preserver aid funds for congregational staff.

General staffing pitfalls, all right, it's not just about part time, it's not just about ministers, we have kind of a history of congregations expecting staff to do all the things. And that's a long trend that I could talk for a whole workshop about how and why that's come to happen, and how we kind of have to unravel that expectation that we just hired people to get things done. And once we have hired people, they will take care of everything. That's not what church is meant to be about. We do have unrealistic job scopes for both part time and full time employees. You know, you're paying somebody whether it's 15 hours a week, or 40 hours a week, and you look at what you expect of them, and it's not realistic, or you hire somebody for something that feels like a realistic job scope. And the end, there's scope creep, right, the job expands to fill the time allotted. And then some, and that's something we're always watching out for. Staff time is not always as well boundary as it it could be or should be, and that's on the part of the congregation, you know, sometimes expecting sort of this 24/7 availability of their minister or other staff, when I mean, we shouldn't even expect that a full time staff, right. And on the staff members side themselves, sometimes they don't boundary themselves very well, they they get paid time off, they're not taking it, they're supposed to have a, you know, certain week that they take off, and they end up checking their email and getting dragged into things. So these are all pitfalls. And then finally, what has compelled many of us to look at different strategies for staffing, personnel costs are straining the resources of the congregation. So these are general things that we're noticing. And so a few things that I think about with respect to undoing those issues. Really think about this mindset that the staff are there to facilitate the ministry of the congregation, to equip and mobilize the laity. That the staff and the laity are in a mutually supportive relationship. Where, where people's job scopes are continually reviewed, volunteer roles and interests are assessed, and priorities need to be set goals need to be set, what can you do well, with the resources you have. I know that, you know, if I had 100 hours, I would be doing more things, because there always are more things to do. And I am not going to work 100 hours a week, and they don't compensate me to do that. So ministerial employment agreements. Absolutely. We have been historically, very full time normative. And that's something that I've already pledged to get away from, kind of the full time agreement is the standard and everything else is sort of this variation that we have to figure out. So we have this concept. Here's the bucket of things that ministers do. So when we're talking about a part time agreement, that gets more customized, there's a smaller bucket, what does that mean? It might mean, you expect them to do all of those same things as the full time Minister bucket, but less. All right, so they're still going to preach but they're not going to do it as often. It can also mean they're not going to do all of the things that choices are going to get made about where they put their energy. And these aren't meant to be an either or there's usually a both. And they're going to do some of the same things, but less, but they're going to be choices about not doing all of the things. So I have a list here that is not meant to be completely comprehensive. But here are some of the things you can think of, are they are these things we're going to just cross off? You know, here are things that we kind of expect a full time ministers. Which of these things are they just not going to be involved in? And which are the things might they be, but it's going to be less? All right. And we can talk a little more about some of those things if you like. So when it comes to compensating them, and looking at their time, there are different ways of thinking about this, I'm most again, this shows our full time bias. When I'm thinking about part time ministry, my head immediately goes to what full time equivalent is this? Is it three quarters time, is it one quarter time, someone asked me if two thirds ministry could be a thing. And I said, Of course, it can be a thing, what does that look like. But you can also have an arrangement where it's hours per month, or there could be a fee basis, we want you to do these things. And here's how we're going to pay you for these things. So figuring out what salary and housing is appropriate for whatever you're asking of that person and their time, benefits, professional expenses, moving expenses, might come into play. Certainly work weeks and leave provisions, figuring out the regular schedule for paid time off. We do have an employment agreements page, you'll see very quickly that it's full time normative, but we did Renee Ruchotzke on the Central East Region staff and I created kind of a quickie house type agreement a few years ago. That's meant for halftime contract ministers, so you're welcome to look at that, by contract I mean, hired. So work expectations of the minister. They're customized, like I said, that bucket is customized. Some of that has to do with congregational needs and priorities, what's most important, some of it has to do with the individual minister, they might have some tremendous gifts in certain areas and not others, that's going to impact the best way of using their time. Volunteer and staff capacity and capabilities. Right, you might have other things that are already being done very well. And you're happy with the minister not being as involved in those areas. So a couple things to keep in mind with this. Things change over time, priorities might change, you want to build in some flexibility, you might have an amazing staff member or volunteer who takes on a certain certain area of church life. And then at some point in time, that's not happening anymore. Is this an area where you need the Minister to put in more time, so be prepared to be flexible? Worship, I name this because it's so time consuming. All right, I hear and ministers feel free to put in the chat if you have a different number in your head. But I often hear 15 hours or 15 hours to prepare for a given worship service, writing the sermon, researching what have you. So that's pretty easy to scale. If you want your minister to have time for other things, maybe they preach a little less. Vacation time is also quite scalable. And that might be valuable. If you're finding that the resources you have maybe just don't quite you know, it's a little skimpy for halftime, let's say in some that you were kind of picturing a halftime ministry. What if you made it a half time ministry in general, but you built in more vacation, that might be a satisfactory way to value the minister's time and still get what you need. Time and schedule depend on so many things. And this is where I really was thinking what are what are all the differences that could make a difference in how you think about the ministers time and their schedule. Someone who is part time by choice you You know, they may or may not have a lot, a lot of flexibility in their schedule, they might be by vocational like Jeff McDonald, they might have a completely different job, they might be trying to craft a full time position out of multiple setting, oops. And all of those things are oops, where'd I go?

There we go. Um, they're all different, the person who said that they're preaching, you know, recording themselves in one location and using that somewhere else. That the expectations have with technology have become much more interesting and flexible. So many considerations about how you think about and schedule your ministers time. But we talked about three kinds of basic models. And the first one is there's a monthly block of time, you know, the Minister is coming in from a remote location, perhaps, and you want to get everything you can for them, while they're on site for, say, one week a month or something like that. You could also look at weekly days, on and off, you know, you they they will be available on and this is interesting, because then you get into weeks, they're preaching and weeks, they're not and what does that look like, but on average, they're going to be available on particular times, right, that's when they're going to be doing their church work. There might also be an arrangement where they track their hours, and they report it to the board monthly. So there, there are a variety of ways of looking at part time work. And so how you craft things like vacation and time off, vary depending on the model. If someone is working two weeks on and two weeks off, that's different from roughly half time every week. And that influences how you craft their time off expectations. In general, some good rules of thumb, make other work or activities possible. So if they're only technically working for you 24 hours a week, but you need them in and you have a lot of evening expectations, you know, who's going to be able to fit in something around around that easily. That gets very complicated. Just be sure that everyone has a common understandings. And this is I don't want to get into the math really, unless you're dying for me to but sometimes it's helpful to think about time on rather than time off when you're looking at the whole agreement, including vacation and study leave. So I've done that exercise with people, I'd be happy to help with that. I really want you to hear and if you read Jeff's book, there's one thing he said, really only one thing in that whole book that made my hair stand on end a wee bit. He said something about that imply that you could just pay somebody as an independent contractor to do things, perhaps 10 Or 20 Or 30 hours a week. Don't do that. That is if someone comes in preaches a few times a year for you, that's fine, right? One time, very occasional, that can be an independent contractor. But this is, if this is your minister, their name shows up on your website, they're engaging with congregants, you have expectations of them ongoing, that is an employee. It's a legal distinction. And it can get very complicated if you break the law around that. So please don't do that. And I have a link to our article about that. Salary and housing. We did learn we did an interesting survey last spring around salary and benefits. And some of you may, your congregations may have participated in that, we learned that actually part time are often paid a little better than just prorating the full time. So if you look at our at our salary recommendations, and you see, you know, $60,000 is the full time expectation and you're looking at quarter time. It could be that it might to make that an attractive thing. You might have to go with a little more than a quarter of 60,000. We're not sure all the reasons for that. Some of them might have to do with people who dropped below the benefits eligibility threshold, and it might just be you know, to make it worth somebody's time you have to pay a little more or not universally, but we saw that in our survey. Please know that the housing designation and if you're unsure about housing allowance, we can get into that if you'd like to, that's unrelated to whether they're part time or full time, if a minister wants you to designate you know, $2,000 a month toward their housing allowance, which means that's money that they don't have to pay federal and state income taxes on in most states. You can do that it doesn't matter whether they're 40 hours a week, or 10 hours a week, it's really kind of interesting quirk that can affect things because some ministers end up designating having almost all of their salary or even all of it designated as housing allowance. That's fine, as long as they know that they have those housing expenses. And ministerial tax provisions. We have a thing on this. So if you're unclear about dual tax status in lieu of FICA, voluntary withholdings, all of those things, we have a resource on that. Benefits. I'll say a little bit about that really, really important. Please understand the eligibility criteria and enrollment deadlines. And this is something especially, you know, some of our smaller congregations, they don't hire as often they, they tell the tell the

tell the minister or another staff member that they will pay for a certain benefit, and then they miss the enrollment deadline, things happen. So we want to make sure you're very clear about who's eligible and what the enrollment deadlines are for benefits. And please know that eligibility for UUA benefit plans is set by our plan rules by the UUA, not by your congregation. So this often has to do with other staff as well, right? Like you, you can't say, well, we only give that benefit to the minister and not our other staff. And we can talk more about that if you like and we have a benefits tune up workbook to help you with those legal compliance pieces. So in terms of the UUA insurance plans, just really briefly, I don't expect you to take this all in, any employee who's scheduled to work at least 750 hours a year, which is about 15 hours a week year round, is eligible for any of our insurance plans. And yes, I know this came up in the q&a earlier, if you have an arrangement where they're working for another congregation that participates in those same plans, those hours get added. So they might only be quarter time for you. But if they're also quarter time for another congregation, that is going to add up to closer to 1000 hours a year. And then they would be eligible. Again, assuming both those congregations are participating. And we can get into that a little more if you like. And if you offer to one you must offer to all of your eligible employees, some of our congregations, the minister might happen to be the only eligible employee. And that's okay, just know that you must make it available. And then you can you do for insurance plans, you can set an equitable policy for premium contributions. So you might stay that you'll pay 80% of the premium for a full time staff member and 50% for someone who's under 30 hours a week. That's fine. Just apply it consistently. All right, retirement plan, lots of rules on the retirement plan, I will not blast you with all of them. All employees 18 and over can authorize voluntary contributions. So if you know you're in our retirement plan, you know your childcare person who works three hours a week, if they want to put some of their money in our retirement plan, they can do that. Some employees will be eligible for employer contributions, the ones that your congregations pay for, that includes all ministers, anyone who's completed their ministerial internship, once they're eligible, they're always eligible. And there's a year of eligibility service, which the gist of that is 1000 hours. So this would be for someone who doesn't meet the minister ministerial criteria they would, If they're working, if they've worked 1000 hours in 12 months, again, you'd add hours for multiple congregations. Something super important that I'm going to add to this slide before I send them to Beth, is that you, if you're in our retirement plan, you're kind of congregation has committed to a particular percentage. So our recommendation is 10%, you can go as low as five, we have congregations doing 14. So once you have set that percentage with us, anyone who receives those contributions, that's the percentage they get. There's no negotiating that goes on with that. And I wanted to stop there just to make sure that we had plenty of time and to see where people's thoughts and energy is. So I hope that was helpful just to get your, your brains going. And what's on your mind. I

think we're a small enough group that we can just do. Maybe do hands in the chat or or just wave frantically at me. Call on you. Let's see, I see a few people waving I saw Peg Bison waving first. And then go to Bobby and Ann

Speaker 2  21:25  
It's a basin wouldn't you know? And I blame that on my husband.

Jan Gartner  21:30  
Yeah, tell that whole I before E before doesn't work, does it.

Speaker 2  21:37  
Um, I am a board secretary at a church in Clark Lake, Michigan, a small church. And we are soon to be entering into yoked ministry with a another church in Poughkeepsie, New York. So we will be sharing one minister. You know, no one has talked about yoked ministry. Yeah. I wondered if you have any recommendations there as to as do we split salary in half? Do we split benefits in half? Or do you recommend one church paying all the salary maybe or you know how you What do you recommend?

Jan Gartner  22:25  
Yeah. So this is going to be they're going to have a separate employment agreement with each of you. Like you are hiring them halftime, Poughkeepsie is hiring them halftime?

Yeah.

So again, and if they're, if they're halftime year round, they would be eligible for these benefits anyway. But you might want to touch base with me and I can explain how the benefits work at look, it's a little different on the retirement side. Like on the retirement side, you might have committed to 10% in Poughkeepsie, doing 6%. And you just each do your own thing. You send your money to empower separately. Insurance, it's different and how you calculate the right contribution from each one is, you know, that's something I can help you with. But yeah, those are great questions, things like what keeps you connected from a schedule standpoint? Or if the Minister is going to go to General Assembly or pay their UUMA dues? How are those things getting covered in an equitable way that are truly shared expenses? That's something to even though you're two separate employers, you want to work on some kind of, you know, agreement between the congregations that flushes out, you know, I assume that the minister is going to want to have the same vacation weeks, or on the flip side, who gets them for Christmas Eve or Easter? You know, all those kinds of things? Or is there going to be like Cynthia mentioned that she was doing with some recordings so that two people could hear the same sermon on the same day. So I hope that helps. But please reach out to me because I'm doing a lot of these and I think they're fun and interesting. So, congrats on that model. Let's see.

Speaker 2  24:26  
Can I ask a follow up on that? I noticed they recommended a covenant within one church where the part time minister and the congregants would make an arrangement, an agreement of who does what. Do you think that? Have you ever heard of or do you recommend a column a covenant between churches who are sharing in a yoked ministry? 

Jan Gartner  24:58  
Yeah, and I I don't know if I, if anyone is calling it a covenant, but but some kind of documented shared understandings around those things like schedule and expectations that need to be coordinated. And yeah, like who's going to pay the insurance? And who's getting the insurance invoice? And then how is the other church going to reimburse for that? Because in that case, one invoice, and then you have to work it out between you. So yeah, I had said I would go to Bobby and then, Ann and then we'll look at the other hands.

Speaker 3  25:41  
Hey, I just said, Oh, man, I gotta unmute.

Jan Gartner  25:45  
You're good. Oh, I

Speaker 3  25:46  
am. Excuse me. If you said to quickies? Can I get a? How do I get a copy of all your slides? 

Jan Gartner  25:54  
I'm going to send them to Beth Casebolt. And I believe they will appear on that leader lab page with all of the other resources from this event. 

Speaker 3  26:06  
Okay, that's fine. That's fixed that one slide. I'm gonna I'm making a note to fix that one slide. Because I want to make sure it's clear about my second question. Maybe I didn't understand. But you said if an employee works 750 hours or whatever, that they're entitled to benefits. It used to be 1000, did it not? I,

Jan Gartner  26:33  
I've been in this office seven years. And I know it was 750 for the insurance plans, as long as I've been there. But I remember seeing like a 2004 copy of like, personnel policies or something that said, 1000, that made me think at some point in the past, maybe there was a higher threshold. But just to be clear, that's for insurance. And the retirement plan has separate eligibility criteria. We just like to keep things confusing.

Speaker 3  27:08  
Yeah, I know. Okay, so what's the difference between the insurance, medical insurance and the retirement and tell me what the difference is? 

Jan Gartner  27:19  
So all of the insurance plans, medical, dental, life, disability, long term disability, 750 hours. If you're, if the employee is scheduled to work 750 hours in a year or more, they're eligible. Retirement plan. The first thing to know since we're talking about ministers, is that if someone has a fellowship minister, or even if they've just completed their ministerial internship, they wait that's for, yeah, retirement,

they are automatically in from day one. If you hire a minister, they're minister and fellowship, or they're getting very close, they've completed their internship, they are automatically eligible for retirement contributions. They could be three hours a week, they would be eligible for retirement contributions. For others, you look at instead of looking ahead, are they scheduled to work 750? You look back, have they worked 1000 hours, and there's some nuance, I don't want to get into it. But we have stuff. So

Speaker 3  28:30  
yeah, but but let's say, um, I just hired a part time Minister 50% of the time. I have to pay him for medical insurance if he wants, right 50

Jan Gartner  28:43  
It means that they are eligible for our medical insurance. And then you set policy about how much do you pay of the premium? Yeah. So and we have congregations just as an example, who pick up the full cost for long term disability, but make life insurance available at the employee's own expense if they want it. You know, so there are different ways that people figure out the most important.

Speaker 3  29:14  
Yeah. So we have the options there to do that. 

Jan Gartner  29:17  
And yeah, and we just, you know, hope it's done in a way that's reasonable and equitable. Ann you are next and then I'll go to the hands

oops, you're, you're muted still Ann

a full time minister gets three months of leave, like study, leave vacation and sabbatical in a year. Is that universal? And then how do you split that up for part time people? I mean, it seems like a lot. Give a part time person. Yeah,

this is where you get into those different models and the math. So if you know things works full time if they work a full time week, every month. And so they're quarter time. What does that mean in terms of how many full time equivalent weeks they're getting off versus the other time off that they already have? Right? Whereas if they are working consistently, quarter time or halftime, we would still expect them to get four weeks off, except every week they take off. Is there quarter time or time week? Yeah. So I mean, the math gets a little wonky. And of course, it's not always that clean, like it's either one week a month, or it's quarter time every week. But yeah, you can work those things out. The bottom line is whether you think it's a lot of time or not, we do expect it to be proportional so that someone who's working half time taking all of that time off into account, they'll be working half as much as someone who works full time.

Overall. Benefits are usually just split proportionately.

The benefits I was thinking about.

I guess the leave split proportionally. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Barnaby, hi there. So

Speaker 5  31:28  
I'm here doing them are quite a few people. And I'm moving from being a full time Minister retiring, looking at a halftime interim job. And I many ministers I've known in New England, keep their homes, drive to the halftime job elsewhere in New England. And I'm interested, because I haven't had chance to look at that halftime sample agreement that you've drafted with Renee, does it say anything about housing expenses for that kind of arrangement. Is that treated, you just negotiate your compensation, and you pay for whatever arrangements you make where you go, and it doesn't enter into housing compensation, because you've still got your, your own home as the basis for your housing compensation. 

Jan Gartner  32:18  
I, I wish I purposely was like I, I bet someone's going to ask me this. And I'm just gonna have to say that I, it's a little complicated. And I know there are some rules that our interims have used that are like special things that you can do for up to one year, but not beyond a year. And, you know, I, I would want to consult, my teammate, Shawn actually has worked a little more with this than I have. But also, it's really one of those things is complicated enough that it's worth checking with a tax professional about whether there's a way to structure it so that they can be compensated, you know, in a way, that's not part of your taxable income.

Speaker 5  33:06  
Right, because, you know, I think it's to their advantage if you actually spend time there, but you don't want to get into a situation where they're saying, Oh, well, we've got a room in a congregants house. That won't cost anything. We want you to stay there.

Jan Gartner  33:20  
Yeah. Well, and that's a whole that's a whole nother ball of wax. Right? Yeah. Yeah. How do we make it reasonable? What, you know, what are reasonable expectations for someone who's coming in occasionally from out of town and how, how they, how that can be done. And of course, we have ministers who are like, Oh, that's gonna work out great. I can stay with my daughter and my grandchild. You know, I mean, there are times where things just work out beautifully. And sometimes where really has to be negotiated to make sense. And I think that's, that's something about that's part of the customization of part time ministry. Yeah. Yeah. Great. And Jan Austin.

Speaker 6  34:09  
I first want to thank you and Shawn, for the help you gave to my congregation about releasing restricted funds. That has been quite a quite a project at my church, which is Wildflower Church in Austin, Texas. Okay. Yeah. I want to be sure that I understand about leaves and study leave for part time, folks. It seems to me if full time is considered 40 hours, then they wouldn't get for four weeks off for vacation time. By the same token, it would seem that you to 20 hour a week employees would get two weeks off. But I don't understand whether they can be compressed and to simply two weeks, 14 days, or whether they need to be a whole month of half days.

Jan Gartner  35:22  
Right? Well that this is the math part. So yeah, that I mean, you want them to get, they would get four, half time weeks off. And so it, I would say, for someone who routinely works, you know, on average halftime all year long, it would just be four weeks. And so when they are not working for those four weeks, you are missing them for half a week, right? Because usually they would have been there for half a week. But if you're someone who does more of that clustered approach where they work two weeks on, two weeks off, then you know you I have double check the math on this with a couple of people, but basically, you would, they would get two additional full weeks off. So a full time person who's getting four full time weeks off, the halftime person would get two full time weeks off, or four halftime weeks off. I know it's I don't, every time I have to do the math.

So we could use either model, either. 

I think it depends how their schedule looks. What what makes sense.

Yeah. But if someone were working regularly 20 hours every week, then we could either do the four weeks of of leave, which would release their halftime for them, or we could negotiate a two week leave?

Well, I think they wouldn't get all their vacation that way. Because I mean, you don't want to say, well, you're getting two weeks off. And those are full time weeks off if they really only work half time. We'll talk offline. I want to get to a couple other questions. Yeah. All right. Pam Peterson.

Give Pam another couple of seconds here.

Can you hear me now? I can.

Speaker 7  37:53  
My question. And I know it's kind of a general one. But I'm in a congregation that 60 years old. They traditionally had a minister until 10 years ago, they had that Minister retire. And they think as a group, they decided they really wanted to be lay led and worked quite well. But I think a lot of us are older, and we're just getting more worn out. And so we're interested in a part time minister. And I guess I'm just wondering what salaries are like out there. And we're in St. Cloud, Minnesota about an hour north of the Twin Cities. And I know it may vary a lot by parts of the country. But you know, what's kind of a ballpark in different regions of the US?

Jan Gartner  38:39  
I can send you to our salary recommendations. And then again, you could just prorate them. Or you could say, well, you know, we should try to do a little bit. If you're looking at, say quarter time where you won't be providing any insurance benefits, you know, you might be able to sweeten the pot a little bit and make the the minister will expect a prorated salary. And it does, you know, it's a small congregation. Yes. And so I would have to check your geo index. I don't want to try to do that on the fly. But I will put a link to our salary program. I'll put it in the chat and I'll add it to the slides. Great and Karen.

Speaker 2  39:36  
Currently, we have a full time minister, but we've been running deficit budgets for a while and it seems to be getting worse. And so we're thinking about part time, but it would be with you know, starting out, negotiating I guess with the same Minister we have. Um, but that's not my question is, just to kind of give you a background, but my question is that the minister keeps track of their time by units. And I don't quite follow it in terms of then how it translates into hours worked.

Jan Gartner  40:19  
Ah, I kno units, to me units have outlived their usefulness, we have a minister on this call who may have a different opinion, I think when ministers were routinely, you know, you picture a, you know, a, I'm picturing as a minister with a family who draw who works office hours in the church and goes home for dinner and a couple nights a week has to come back to church for meetings, and preaches on Sundays. units were really, really helpful in honoring those weird times, you know, like, the meeting might have only been 90 minutes long, but you just blew your evening with your family. So the idea was to say, morning, afternoon, evening, you you're going to work 12 Of those, and we're going to consider that full time. And sometimes, that might be you know, some units might be for four and a half hours, and some might be 90 minutes. But it's a way of keeping them ministers time bounded. So they're not most people aren't working like that anymore. You get up you're, you check your email for an hour. I'm not sure that units are they they're they've never been useful to me. My supervisor is a minister who worked in many congregations as an interim, never used units did not find it useful at all. Barnaby, do you want to issue an opinion on this?

If it works for someone?

Great, but make sure you understand,

Speaker 6  42:04  
never come up in my full time ministry? And I can't imagine that it would be useful. You're right. It's sort of around the clock job. Now. You know, what, when you go to the hospital at midnight, because someone has a heart attack? Is that the evening or the morning?

Jan Gartner  42:21  
Yeah. And you know, here I am putting five hours in on a Saturday, you know, what, I'm just working a couple of light days next week, you know, that's where

Speaker 6  42:32  
my one day off a week. And that's what I'm doing?

Jan Gartner  42:36  
Yeah, but we don't we don't want Barnaby or anybody else working all the time. So it is a way of structuring blocks of time that some people might find useful.

But it might be better to actually identify, you know, you know, if it's a 40 hour job or whatever. Okay,

And you get you will get very different opinions about that some of it is generational, and some of it isn't. But, you know, we have some of our older ministers are like, I'm sorry, this is just, you know, you can't do a full time ministry with if you can't count on putting in a lot of 50 to 60 hour weeks, and we have some of our ministers who are much more like, No, this is you're paying me, I think of full time is 40 hours. That doesn't mean I won't be available in an emergency. But I don't want my job to just keep getting bigger and take over my life. So part time, I think it's going to depend a lot on the ministers other responsibilities, how they think of that time, how flexible they're willing to be all that, can we we're gonna finish up pretty soon.

Speaker 6  43:55  
I'll just say it's also what the ministers came out of, because a lot of people it's a second or third career. My previous career, it said 35 hours of my union paycheck, but nobody in the office work less than 50.

Jan Gartner  44:09  
Huh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's context is everything. Ken. Hi,

Speaker 8  44:19  
our minister left, just before we replace TIAA-CREF as our in our retirement. firm, and I haven't kept track I because she's gone. We didn't have to utilize the new folks. Is it? Is that something that's going to be a problem if we do get a part time minister? The fact that I just kind of dropped off the grid when our minister left because I didn't. We don't have any real need at this moment.

Jan Gartner  45:09  
so, I mean, are you planning? Are you still officially in our retire? You have an agreement on file to be part of our retirement plan at this time.

Speaker 8  45:20  
I did communicate with the lady and I can't remember her name, who is the administrator? And she did say that. Yes. They're, you know, they're holding us in abeyance, so to speak. Yeah. But I guess we're just kind of on hold. 

Jan Gartner  45:38  
Yeah, I mean, if you, you have committed to sending in contributions for anyone who is eligible for them. If nobody's eligible, you don't send them. If you have other staff, though, make sure you're making. They are aware that they can make their own voluntary contributions. So we,

Speaker 8  45:55  
yeah, we don't have any other staff or just our minister and she left. And so here we are. So we're in the middle of our search process. So I suspect as we get a little closer, we may be in more direct communication, to try and make sure that we're not dropping the ball. 

Jan Gartner  46:19  
Sure. That sounds great. Okay, very good. Thank you to hearing from you. All right. The breakout rooms are going to close in a minute. This has been great. It's been really nice to see your faces and get to know some of you. I'm going to do a couple little ads on the slides and please enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Take care, everybody. 

Unknown speaker  46:42  
Thank you, Jan. 

Jan Gartner  46:43  
Absolutely.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai