Mission statement

Dear People of Christ Church,

This past week, we celebrated the end of our official stewardship campaign with a delicious soup and bread lunch. Sarah Staley has been a great chair of our stewardship campaign, and the food was delicious. Thanks be to God-and to each of you who have made--and will make--pledges for 2011.

On Sunday at soup and bread, we spread out paper on each of the tables to invite reflection on hospitality, outreach, faith, and stewardship. The first three came out of our GPS and Vestry retreat. Initially, they came to us as a place to put our focus for our work in the coming years-places where we are particularly passionate, and want to develop our mission further. As I thought about them, though, it seemed to me that they were actually more than that-they were at the center of what our community is about all the time, not just things we need some more work on. It's not entirely surprising that we decided to focus on things that we are already pretty serious about.Tyler Mailman's picture on Sunday of "Holding the Doors Open" (above) is about as good a description of hospitality as I can imagine.

After the group did our work around the mission statement, the GPS committee has moved on to putting some thoughts together around vision. Nothing will say it all-particularly not tidy bullet points (ten of them). This process, though, of putting-into-words has been fascinating. What is it, really, that makes us who we are? There is a lot that is un-sayable-as a Christian believer in a pretty "deconstructionish" mode I'm very committed to the notion that words are unreliable and unsteady. At the same time, not articulating a vision and settling down to be a generic "nice church" also isn't something I can get very excited about. It's a discernment process--trying on some things and seeing if they fit. How do we tackle big concepts like oppression? Are we dodging something central to our faith if we leave them out? Or are we being inclusive so as not to be misunderstood? [In that case, as in many others, the Book of Common Prayer came to the rescue--we have cut and pasted liberally from its articulation of things]. So I do think we need this-- and I've kind of enjoyed the challenge. Also, we have benefited a lot from the gifts and talents of our group members. Mike Balulescu has emerged as an amazing scribe for the group, keeping us focused and not letting us get too wordy. So special thanks to him and to Jonathan Duce, our chair.

After more than a month of meetings, we have a draft--loosely categorized under the themes of hospitality, outreach, and faith. The ten concepts we've named will help us to structure our strategic planning for the next several years. This Sunday, we'll distribute copies of the draft that the committee has come up with. It's not a perfect document, but it is a starting place for us to consider how we articulate our hopes for the community. Each of us will have some time to think about it in the coming week, and then we'll have a parish meeting after the 10:00 service on Sunday to hear each other's thoughts. The GPS committee will meet on November 23, and then offer a final draft. If you aren't able to make it to church this Sunday but would like to see what the committee has come up with, please let me know and I will get you the draft.

Blessings,

Sara+

Mission Statement

As you know, the "GPS" (God's People Serving) Committee has been meeting for some time now at crafting a mission statement. Working from the surveys we received, we attempted to gather all the different threads of what we are about as a congregation. Here's what we have:

Christ Church Waltham is a welcoming Episcopal community brought together in our common worship of God and united in our desire to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
At the parish meeting on Sunday, June 6, about 25 people met after the service to review our draft and talk in small groups. What about the Holy Spirit? Why say "persons," and not "people?" Is it too self-congratulatory to say that we are welcoming? Is it redundant to say "brought together" in one clause and "united" in another? What's with all of those verbs? And shouldn't it be about Waltham, since that's where we are?

These ideas in hand, we returned to the drawing board.

In our group, we tended toward the old joke of four people and five opinions. For some of us, changing to "people" made sense. After all, "persons" sounds a little strange, and you want the reader's emphasis to be on "all," not on wondering about the word choice. For others, though, the emphasis of "persons" helped to stress that we seek and serve Christ in each individual soul; not some generalized mass of humanity. We all liked that "seek and serve Christ in all persons" is the phrasing in the baptismal covenant in the Book of Common Prayer, and we liked the emphasis on remembering our baptism. (loving your neighbor as yourself also follows in the BCP)

Could we make it shorter? We tried! We also wrote some versions with mention of the Holy Spirit. We have a reference to Christ, and to "God" (which isn't specific, but might be read as God the Father or God the Creator). Paradoxically, though, adding in the Holy Spirit could have the unintended result of making "God" mean only God the Father/Creator (since it would be juxtaposed with the other two parts of the Trinity). But our worship is about all three, so we were back to having God just be "God," to signify the Trinity as a whole. The notion of being brought together (from different places) and united (in our differences) really resonated with us, so ended up keeping all of the verbs, too. Initially, our draft just said "We are a welcoming Episcopal Community..." but then people at the Sunday meeting suggested adding "Waltham," so we changed the first sentence to "Christ Church Waltham is..."

Being part of this process has been both fascinating (in an intellectual way) and a spiritual gift. The openness of each person to the voice of the others in the group is so moving, and to be part of a process of dialogue where consensus takes shape is just plain cool. It's not so much that we convinced each other of our opinions, but that the result just emerged.

We had planned to have GPS and Vestry meet together this Saturday for a retreat to talk more about vision and strategic plans for the coming years, but that has been postponed so that more members have a chance to participate. We're hoping for late August, so you'll hear more about the work then. As always, please feel free to talk with me or any vestry or GPS member if you have further thoughts.

Blessings,
Sara+ writing for the GPS Committee:
Mike, Sarah, Gene, Jonathan, Christie, Kristin, Cindy, and Marcia