“What is our mission?  What are we here for?” 

These are the overarching, big-picture questions that served as backdrop to the lively and engaging workshop with which our 2019 Annual Meeting of the Congregation concluded. 

Over the last few months, our congregation’s Governing Board has been delving into the work of articulating more clearly our congregation’s shared sense of mission and purpose.  Possessing a clear and widely-shared sense of mission and purpose positions a congregation for greater vitality and effectiveness.  This vitality and effectiveness comes because such a congregation and its leaders are better empowered to say ‘yes’ to that to which the congregation is truly called and ‘no’ to that which, while still good, is not central to its calling.  As UCC pastor Tony Robinson puts it, “[V]ital congregations have a compelling, biblically shaped, theologically informed purpose or reason for being that marshals their energies and resources and directs their use.”[1]  In addition to providing clarity and energy for our own discernment, having a clear and compelling sense of core purpose makes a congregation more attractive to others not already here, as they can better sense the important and energizing mission in the world to which we are committed and of which they too might want to be a part.

As wonderful and capable as the members of our Governing Board are, they alone can’t arrive at our congregation’s shared sense of mission.  The Board’s role is to help us better articulate our purpose— to do the work that will help unearth and blend and refine the various threads that exist in our many hearts and minds, to be the body that will help us state what emerges out of the mix with clarity and concreteness.  Nevertheless, the Board can’t simply create a shared sense of purpose for us.  Our whole congregation has to be ‘in’ on the conversation for it to be truly a shared sense.

One way the Board is inviting people to get ‘in’ on the conversation is through the “magnetic poetry” board you’ll find in the Parish House Lounge, about which the Board has been sharing announcements for a couple of weeks now.  See the board itself, as well as the Sunday bulletins and Carillon, for more info about that.

Another opportunity to begin engaging this important conversation, though, happened at the Annual Meeting—after all, as our Bylaws say, part of the purpose of the annual meeting is to “discuss plans for the ensuing year,” and what could be more central to that than our discernment and articulation of our core purpose?  This opportunity took the form of a workshop at the annual meeting using the “World Café” conversation process. 

In our first round of the World Café process, people engaged in small group conversations around the question “What is God trying to create in the world through us?”  After fully mixing up the small groups, in round 2, we engaged around the question “What would be different in the world if this church did not exist?”  And then, after another full group mix-up, in round 3 we took up the question “If this church fulfills its purpose, what might we be celebrating one year from now?” (with the caveat that it had to be things besides more people on our church’s membership roster or more money in our church’s bank accounts).

Throughout each round of conversation, participants were encouraged to draw, take notes, doodle, or otherwise have generative fun on the paper ‘tablecloths’ in front of them—connecting and synthesizing ideas from among the participants and from across each of the three rounds of conversation.

At the end of the third round, the overarching question—“what are we here for?”—was put before participants, and each was asked to write a single word, phrase, or brief thought that came to them in response to that question, in light of all of the thinking and conversation they’d experienced over the preceding 45 minutes.  These thoughts were then collected on the “What is our mission?” poster that you’ll now find hanging in the Parish House Lounge and that you see pictured here:

Does this poster with its collection of comments give us a final answer to the question of what our mission is?  Of course not.  But these thoughts, along with all of the other thoughts in the mix of conversations that took place, are important ingredients in the process of discernment, clarification, and articulation that will lead us to being able to say what we understand as our “compelling, biblically shaped, theologically informed purpose or reason for being that marshals [our] energies and resources and directs their use.”

What about you?  How would you answer those questions of what God is trying to create in the world through this church, of what would be different in the world if this church didn’t exist, and of what we might be celebrating a year from now if we fulfill our purpose?  In other words, why are we here?  What are we here for?  And what about that—whatever it is you’d say we’re here for—truly matters:  to you, to the community and world around us, and to God?

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Notes shared on post-its on the “What is our mission?” poster:

• Connect, outreach, part of the solution, encourage each other
• To sing, To worship, To connect, To serve
• connectedness & friendship
• Spiritual fulfilment, and connectedness to SCC members
• We are here to: love our neighbors as ourselves
• Connection
• To help those who don’t know God
• I am here to learn and work to change my generation’s perception of religion and of Christianity. We are love, not hate.
• To wake up to the undefined
• To BE Christians
• We are here to love one another — to love God.
• A more peaceful world
• The Golden Rule
• We should expand our caring which we receive in this church beyond the church as for _____ _______ (can’t make out handwriting)
• Connection and community for spiritual and physical growth
• A different approach to delegation
• To help others in need
• It’s our turn to do as Jesus did
• Acceptance
• To learn “Christ” ways to encounter our lives with meanful input to our community. What do I do and how:
• To be a beacon of Jesus’ love in the community and the world
• Want heavenly kingdom to come on earth — it’s our turn to do it — so pick something and GET STARTED!
• To decide different thing we can do to improve the church
• To inspire hope
• Listen — God is speaking
• Acceptance, Inclusive
• To help others
• Sharing time and talents in God’s service
• Networking with our communities; doing what Jesus did with them
• Experience God’s presence
• service and love to others by example
• Community partnerships
• Growth and understanding
• Connections
• Hope for ourselves and others
• To help others

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Our World Cafe tables’ “tablecloths” (notes, doodles, connection-links, etc.)

It’s hard to try to “transcribe” these tablecloths, with all their varied notes, idea-linkings, doodles, and more. What do you notice as you look through them? (Click on any of them to enlarge)

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[1] Anthony B. Robinson, Changing the Conversation: A Third Way for Congregations (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 99.