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Strategic Visioning Team update at the 149th Convention

During the Diocesan Convention, the Strategic Visioning Team shared its findings from the Listening Sessions in the Fall of 2022. The main takeaways we learned were:

  • You love your faith communities – and you want to see them thrive.
  • The Covid-19 pandemic was really hard on you – and you are still feeling the impacts of it on attendance and engagement in community life.
  • You want to build deeper connections to your neighbors and wider communities – but you need guidance and support.
  • Many of you need guidance on how to do things – such as dealing with building issues, meeting Church reporting requirements and more.
  • You want help and flexibility in figuring out how to support clergy for your faith community.
  • You want to connect to each other through shared ministries and in other creative ways.
  • You want to do something together as a diocese – to be a louder voice in our region on gospel-driven issues.

Based on those findings, the team came up with the following four priorities for the Strategic Vision:

  • Children, Families, Youth and Young Adults – evangelism and formation
  • Congregational Collaboration – particularly to strengthen our smaller congregations
  • Communications and Technology – explaining who we are to the outside world and connecting better internally
  • Justice for People and Planet – working together on gospel-driven justice issues

The next steps in the visioning process include:

  • Forming working teams to meet over the next three months to articulate goals and develop initiatives; members of the visioning team will lead each new group;
  • Recruiting people across the diocese to join us in this effort;
  • Creating new Mission and Vision statements to guide the efforts of the diocese moving forward; and
  • Providing an opportunity for everyone to give feedback on the proposed statements later this winter.

We will share more details on how to get involved over the next few weeks. If you have questions about what’s next, please contact Strategic Visioning Team’s co-leaders or consultant.