Planting Your Seeds to Grow Our Garden of Goals
An Imagining Event
The visioning committee is excited to move to the next phase of our visioning process, the imagining phase. On March 23rd immediately following church, we will be gathering in fellowship hall to discuss the feedback we received from all the great input that was gathered during the focus groups last fall. There will also be small activities and sandwiches offered by the social committee. A good will offering will be accepted.
Provocative Proposals
Following the focus groups, the committee analyzed all the input and looked for common themes and dreams of the Church of Peace. From there, the committee created 14 Provocative Proposals (found on the back of this sheet). According to Mark Lau Branson, in the Appreciative Inquiry process, “a Provocative Proposal is an imaginative statement about the future, crafted as if it were already experiential and generative.” In some ways, these statements are already true, and in some ways they are asiprational. They respond to the question: As a church, who are we and what do we do? You’ll notice that the content for these proposals comes directly from the small group conversations held last fall.
Congregational Participation
During the imagining event, the congregation will have a chance to review and discuss our 14 provocative proposals in small groups. We will engage in creative brainstorming and generate examples of actions we could take. After the discussion, everyone will have a chance to vote on which top 5 proactive proposals mean the most to them for the life of the church. With the votes tallied we will narrow our 14 provocative proposals down to seven to nine. The church’s top provocative proposals will be used to help write a new, updated Church of Peace mission statement.
This is the first time in almost two decades where the entire congregation is invited to help dream of what the future of our church holds. Please come and join us as we look forward to a day of sharing our church’s rich history and our vision for ensuring that it is carried on into the future.