Annual Meeting Minutes

• 2006 Meeting Minutes
• Place: Washington Convention Center
• Time: AAR Philadelphia, Friday, Nov. 17th @ 1:00 pm
• Executive Council Members Present: Gary Deddo, Eric Flett, Robert Leach, Paul Molnar
• Excused: Elmer Colyer, due to illness
• Absent: Peter Heltzel

• President's greetings and Annual Meeting called to order by TFTTF President, Gary Deddo.
• About 40 persons were in attendance.
• Opening Prayer: Eric Flett
• Minutes for the 2005 Philadelphia meeting were approved.

Old Business

Baton Rouge Conference
Gary spoke briefly about the Baton Rouge conference sponsored by Gerrit Dawson at First Presbyterian Church, Baton Rouge with the theme Discovering the Incarnate Saviour of the World. Several TFTTF members were speakers at this event and Gary reported that it was a successful and fruitful time.

Approximately 200 people attended the conference, with the talks now available on CD from First Presbyterian. Hopefully additional conferences of this nature can be organized in the future.

TFTTF Website
Robert Leach, formerly the webmaster for the site, had to significantly scale back his management of the site due to new pastoral duties in Indiana. At present JoAnn McNeely has volunteered her time to manage the site. (www.tftorrance.org). You may contact her through Gary or via the site if you have suggestions for the improvement of the site, or would simply like to thank JoAnn for the work she is doing.

Online Journal
Robert Leach will continue his involvement with the Fellowship by managing the online journal. Robert reported that, with an official name and ISBN in place we are now able to publish articles online (One volume needs to be published before we can secure the ISSN). However, an editorial board to review submissions is needed before articles can be received and posted! If you are interested you may contact any member of the executive board.

Material for the online journal will be solicited from interested contributors and papers presented at our annual meetings will also be considered for publication.

Treasurer’s Report
Gary gave the Treasurer's Report in light of Peter Heltzel’s absence.

Over the past five years we have incurred about $450 of expenses for room reservation, AAR/SBL announcements and web-hosting. Our web-hosting fee increased to $4.00 a month to accommodate our larger site. None of those expenses have been reimbursed to members who covered the cost. Most of that amount will be reimbursed after the first of the year. If the total expenses were reimbursed we would be running a $100 deficit. Next year's expenses are estimated to be about $175. So we'd need an additional $275 for this coming year with no increases.

We now have a no-fee bank account, Charter One, in Woodridge, Illinois.

Gifts were given in total of $350 in the past 12 months. We can now receive non-tax deductible gifts. We encourage members to contribute to our expenses, gifts of $5 and up would be appreciated. They should be made out to the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship and sent to Gary D or the Treasurer for 2007.

We discussed the ramifications of charging a small annual membership fee of $10.00 per year. This would be an attractive option if online payments could be made via PayPal. This will be pursued.

However, until that is in place we spontaneously decided to take up an on the spot collection and brought in about $171.00 towards the 2007 budget. Thanks to all who contributed.

Membership Status At present the Fellowship has over 90 members registered from around the world. Many of these registrations took place online via the website. If you have not updated your contact details lately this can also be done via the website.

New Busniess

Hosting of TFT’s Out-of-Print Publications, Sermons and Talks
This idea was briefly considered. However, electronic rights are being reserved for the oversight of the literary estate of TF Torrance by Princeton Theological Seminary. So we will not be able to host such works.

Perhaps the website could provide a catalog of links to direct interested visitors to sites where Torrance materials could be found/secured. Some notification on the site of recent books published in areas of interest to Torrance scholars might also be helpful.

Kerry Dearborn noted that she had cassette tapes of the courses James taught at Fuller. Could they be legally digitized and posted? In addition, some lectures have recently been posted online at Ben Myers blogspot (www.faith-theology.blogspot.com).

Finally, Regent College has CD’s of some of Tom’s, James’ and Alan’s lectures that might be obtainable online. If Fellowship members hear of any new developments regarding the publishing work of the Torrance’s do pass that information on and we will try to get it posted online for everyone’s benefit.

Executive Committee Leadership Elections
After a slate of new nominations were presented by chair of the nominating committee, Robert Leach, and a vote the following persons were added to the executive leadership:
Treasurer: Joel Scandrett
Member at Large: Peter Heltzel
Ad hoc members (non-voting) were also added: Victor Shepherd and Elmer Colyer

A motion was also placed by Joel Scandrett, as proxy for Elmer Colyer, that the term of presidency be extended one year for Gary Deddo, to serve through November, 2007. This was seconded and passed by vote of the membership.

Future Meetings/Miscellany
• Gary suggested that it would be advantageous to have speakers arranged at least two years in advance. Suggestions for future speakers were solicited and are still welcome.
• Special thanks to Paul Molnar for advertising the Fellowship in the Karl Barth Society newsletter.
• The idea of a speakers bureau was suggested, with the idea that the Fellowship be seen as a resource for churches and other organizations and not simply a scholarly fellowship.
• Picking up on the idea of the group as a fellowship, Marty Folsom and Joel Scandrett suggested that some kind of regional meetings would be helpful, or other ways to connect with members of the fellowship apart from the annual AAR meetings. This may be even more important when the AAR/SBL split takes place.
• 2013 will be TFT’s centenary year. Should the Fellowship plan something special? Will the University of Edinburgh do anything? Will Princeton?

Meeting adjourned at 1:55 in time for the presentation to be given by our speaker, Victor Shepherd.

Submitted by Eric Flett (Secretary)