Beloved,
In my sermon last week, I alluded to two major initiatives the Vestry is undertaking this fall at St. Mark’s. The first was the invitation last week at the Community Faire for everyone in the parish to sign up to volunteer for a major event or ministry effort during the coming program year. Thank you for your incredible response to this effort and encouragement to us as we embark on this year together!
I’m writing this morning to share more about the second initiative. The Vestry of St. Mark’s invites you to be a part of a series of Strategic Stakeholder Conversations this fall. Building from the Reflective Leadership Conversations held this summer, in which 21 leaders of 23 ministries were interviewed, we’d now like for you to hear from each other.
Our hope with these conversations is to rebuild our strategic muscles post-covid in this Season of Transition 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.
We’re designing five (5) Strategic Stakeholder Groups whose scope of ministry align well together. While each stakeholder group will have some overlap in considerations and questions, they will each address foundational questions comfortably in their area of ministry. In the past, we’ve heard similar efforts have either been too broad a brush across unrelated ministries or too isolated, and our aim has been to come close to what Goldilocks called “just right.”
Vestry members will work together to facilitate and design how each stakeholder group will tackle their foundational questions provided below. Some of you will be invited to join specific stakeholder groups because of previous experience or leadership in a ministry area. Everyone is invited to join the group you feel most led to participate in this fall. We know it may be hard to choose from among the different stakeholder groups, but we hope everyone will find a conversation that is a fit for them.
Each stakeholder group will hold three (3) conversations over the course of the Fall, with the first of these being held at the forum hour Sunday, September 15. Please review the groups below and begin to pray for your vestry leaders of these groups as well as how you might feel called to join them. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or clarification.
Pax,
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
