Courageous Conversations: Stewarding Our Facilities for Changing Times
During the month of January, we will hold our second, annual, church-wide Courageous Conversations. This is an effort we started last year to create intentional, safe space for our congregation to have enriching conversations around topics that might be difficult to engage because of the varying perspectives we all may hold. It is also an effort to model for our community that disagreement does not have to lead to disunity but that we can seek understanding amidst our disagreements, can enjoy harmony and unity amidst our diversity, and can be kind always.
The discipleship committee had discussed several topics for this year’s conversation, many of which were suggested by the congregation at the close of last year’s conversation. Ultimately, however, the discipleship committee, in conjunction with the church council, realized that there was a great deal of information coming together regarding our facilities and the strong work of our facilities renewal task force. We all realized that the congregation needed space and time to hear about this information, to absorb some of the ideas that are on the table, and to help discern how to proceed wisely with open questions that remain. During this year’s conversation we will have opportunity to talk about our changing cultural context, the good things happening in our church, our current financial situation, and the strengths and hurdles of having a large, older facility. We will also have opportunity to discuss a report from our facilities renewal task force and to brainstorm ways to turn hurdles into opportunities.
This year’s conversation will take place on the four Sundays in January (1/7, 1/14, 1/21, and 1/28) from 9:30 am until 10:45 am. You will notice this is 15 minutes earlier than our typical Sunday School start time so that we can have more space for table conversations than we had last year. We hope all adults and youth will join us in this conversation. Nursery and children’s Sunday School we begin at 9:30, as well, so that parents can drop off their children and be present for the full conversation. There will also be a church-wide breakfast for the first gathering, January 7, beginning at 9:00 am. We can’t wait to see you there!!!
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