BACKGROUND AND INSPIRATION, by Marie Murphy Former Parish Committee Chair 2009-2010
Beginning in the autumn of 2006 the Parish Committee undertook a Vision and Mission process. Our growing church was beginning to stress the resources we had and we knew change was inevitable, but we couldn’t create that change without the input of the congregation. The Vision/Mission process was designed to give every member a voice in determining the direction that the Parish Committee would steer us through the changes ahead.
Those of you who participated in the Vision/Mission work will remember many of the gatherings that we held to help us better understand and articulate what was important to us as a congregation as we moved into the future. It was the first time that the entire congregation was called together in a “bottom-up” approach to address the needs and desires of the entire membership.
Visioning work began in earnest in the autumn of 2006 when we called the entire congregation together to imagine its collective dream for our future church. About 200 of our members participated in this collective visioning process. Every idea, numbering well over 500, that was presented was captured and compiled in a list that was used throughout the entire Vision/Mission process. In October of that year, a Vision Statement was presented to the Church membership and, after minor revisions, was approved.
The process then moved on to the development of a Mission Statement. The work to develop that statement was carried out during an overnight retreat at the Ferry Beach Retreat Center in Maine
With the Vision and Mission statements completed by the end of the church year in 2007, the Parish Committee turned its attention to the integration of these statements into church governance. The hope of the Parish Committee was that the vision and mission process would provide a broad but clear voice that could guide the planning and budgeting process over the next several years.
During the next two church years the Parish Committee struggled to keep the vision and mission of the church from fading away. The focus of monthly meetings traditionally was the day-to-day business of the church and there existed an urgency to it that kept the focus off of long term planning. The Parish Committee turned their work inward, to first find a better way to conduct meetings so that strategic planning could become the central focus of their work.
Several systems were put into place that helped this process. Planning retreats were scheduled at least once a year. A consent agenda was created that provided much more time during meetings by giving all Parish Committee members the responsibility of reading reports before they came to the meeting so that there would not have to be a rehash of them during the meetings (traditionally most meetings were taken up with report reading prior to this). By the fall of 2009 the Parish Committee meetings had carved out the time to have in-depth discussions of importance.
The first strategic act of the Parish Committee was to educate themselves about the role of governance and in particular, the role of governance within a church. The book, Governance and Ministry; Rethinking Board Leadership, by church consultant Dan Hotchkiss, was purchased for each member of the Parish Committee and each month we dedicated ourselves to the discussion of one chapter. By the end of the year we had finished the book and were all on the same page with regard to knowing what we needed to do next.
By reading this book we grew to understand our strengths and weaknesses as a governing body. The greatest take-away for us was the need to develop policies that would empower each constituency of the church (minister, staff, officers, and members) to do the work of the church within the framework of church’s bylaws and constitution, but just as importantly, with the vision and mission of the church in the forefront. The Parish Committee would be able to focus their good work of long term strategic planning knowing that the business of the church was attended to through the policies they had created.
During the annual retreat of 2010 we made the decision to focus efforts during the next church year on developing a policy governance structure using the model in Hotchkiss’ book as a guide.
Now, well into the church year, the Parish Committee has produced the first drafts of the higher level policies. Because our church is run under principles of democracy it is important that this process is both transparent and informative so that all members have an educated voice in the decisions that will be made. This summary of background may raise more questions than answer them and yet we hope that it provides a backdrop for the work ahead.
