Visioning Process
Here’s from my July 2010 pastor’s column for the newsletter:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
Luke 14:28-30
These last few months have been a fun time for us as a church. We finished up our Sunday School year with growth, and had another great vacation Bible school with almost 90 kids. Our worship services are still above last year’s numbers, even figuring in for winter visitors going back to the Midwest, and we took in 25 new members. Now that things are getting back on track towards growth, we’re going to start the first steps of a visioning/strategic planning process, to help us figure out where God is calling us as a church, and our general direction for the future. Our vision team, comprised of Jim DeGirolamo, Phyllis Teager, Lynda Reeves and Jeff Fitch, met this month to get the process going.
The plan is to spend this year doing mostly assessments and information gathering in three areas: our church (our hopes, dreams, strengths, gifts, passions), our community (their needs, wants, struggles), and the trends in the larger culture that affect religion and churches. To accomplish this, we will be doing surveys and getting feedback from within our congregation, doing research in the community, and having forums to hear speakers, have discussions, and share ideas. There will be lots of information gathering, and regular feedback to the council and the congregation. Not long into the process, we should begin to see some patterns emerging with all this data that should give us some good ideas of the general direction God is calling us to go. This will be completed by the congregational meeting in early December.
All this is only the first phase, where we start to see directions. No decisions or changes are made at this point. The second phase, what I call the how phase, where we brainstorm specific actions and potential changes (new programs etc.), comes next year, and is a somewhat different process. More specifics are inside, and a regular column will be in this newsletter to keep everyone updated on events and progress. If anyone is interested in helping out with the vision team, just let me know. There’s plenty to do.
