We’ve been a busy Board already this year! Because we have so much to share, we are offering it in three parts….first up, an update about our need for congregational input on our vision by way of the “Future-Oriented Questions.”
Over the years, our Boards have long engaged in visioning and planning for the future. However, they also had significant responsibilities in operations. Under our new governance system, the ministry team is responsible for the day-to-day running of the church, which allows the Board to spend much more time on high-level questions and visioning.
Now, each year, the Board will go through a process of listening and deciding where our mission calls us to go next. To do this, we listen to you, the congregation, and we consider our place in the community. The dialogue with you happens through our Future-Oriented Questions. At our annual Board retreat, we decided on these three questions as the basis for our conversation this year:
- How might we re-imagine a joyful, spiritual, human-centered and sustainable community and environment?
- Who does the mission call you to be in relationship with, and what does it mean to be transformed/changed by this work?
- What would it take for people to know you and for you to know yourself deeply? How does that manifest in the congregation?
We’ve already started to explore these questions in worship over the past few Sundays, and will continue that in the next few weeks. We hope that you will take a little time each week to reflect and then to fill out the survey either online (here’s the link) or on paper. Extra paper forms are in the office. Our shared dialogue becomes our future, and so we are grateful for your willingness to share your stories and feedback as we discern together where and how we will unleash courageous love in the coming years.