This past Sunday, September 15, over Sixty (60) St. Marker’s participated in one of five strategic stakeholder groups as part of a Fall Vestry Initiative. This effort continues the Vestry’s attention on the strategic planning begun in 2022 and continuing in the Season of Transition as St. Mark’s searches for a new rector. Our hope with these conversations is to rebuild our strategic muscles post-covid with increased capacity, flexibility, and adaptability as a parish. Our intention is not to fix or solve anything, we aren’t solutions-focused in these groups. Our conversations will invite us to dwell with the core values and fundamentals of our faith and open us to the possibilities for the future as your new Rector joins the Vestry in carrying forward the strategic vision for St. Mark’s.
The next conversation to be held, unless your group’s facilitator has communicated otherwise, will be Sunday, October 27 at the forum hour. Please see some pictures from the first conversations and read further below about the five groups and their foundational questions.
Here are the five Strategic Stakeholder Groups and their foundational questions:
Care and Connection: What comes to mind as you reflect on the importance of care and connection at St. Mark’s? What could it look like for the church to take an appreciative approach to its ministry, focused on the particular lives of our members and potential members (instead of a model where the church exists to fill roles and structures that may have been designed around a different approach in a previous era)? Facilitator: Randy Smith | Scribe: Marina Martin
Christian Formation: What kinds of things should a Christian/baptized member of St. Mark’s know/practice connected in their faith? How do we creatively and joyfully form them, at any age, into these things? Facilitator: Kathy Gilliam | Scribe: Crystal Larsen
Serving Christ in Others: What are the kinds of things the Christians disciples are called to beyond Sunday morning, what of those things are part of our calling, and what partnerships might augment our communal impact in those kinds of things for all ages? Facilitator: Jonake Bose | Scribe: Martha Chan
Worship: How is our worship inclusive of the voices and gifts of our members? How do we redevelop the structures of liturgical ministries to be partners of the clergy in the care of worship? Facilitator: Cheryl Miller | Scribe: Stuart Sailer
Funding our Mission: With all of the possibilities above and more, how do we resource St. Mark’s ministry on a 3, 5, and 10 year horizon? What other considerations/permutations do each of our stakeholders contribute to this planning? Facilitator: Jonathan Luk | Scribe: Tom Jenkins
