New Wine Process Moves Forward

The six regional listening sessions that marked the beginning of the New Wine Strategic Planning process were completed during Lent. Working with our consultant Sandi Scannelli we have begun to distill the many comments that were gleaned from those meetings. The meetings produced a tremendous amount of data.

One dominating theme was the need for greater interconnection between the diocese and the parishes as well as between parishes. There was a strong interest in building stronger bridges within the laity of the diocese and calls for the diocese to help with this. Many wonderful ideas were shared, although some of the information was more problem solving rather than looking at the diocese from the 3000 foot level. These ideas will all be kept for use when the mission and vision are written.

An important aspect of this planning process is that this is not a top down process, but one that works from the concept of a network that the bishop described at the meetings. The Executive Board made a conscious decision to begin with the people in the pews as we assessed where we are as a diocese in order to begin to look at where we want to go and what we want to be.

As a second step, The Rev. Mark Wilkinson, Rector at St. Aidan’s and chair of the committee, The Rev. Jeunée Cunningham, diocesan Canon for Congregational Development and Sandi Scanneli, our diocesan consultant, presented a summary of these results to the clergy gathered for the Spring Bishop’s Day on May 3rd. The clergy were asked for their reactions to the material gathered. That information has been gathered and will be given to the Executive Board during a retreat day planned for late June.

One of the challenges that our consultant brought to our attention is that we are looking at planning in a new context and for a very different world. Sandi spoke to us about discontinuous change rather than continuous change. Continuous change is change that we can anticipate. For example a rector leaves a parish, we have a search process and a new rector is called. In entering into a planning process in today’s world, the end is not nearly as clear because the world we operate in is very turbulent. Discontinuous change is change where there may not be one clear trusted solution, because the issues and challenges are constantly evolving. What this means is that a traditional strategic planning process may not generate the result we want. The result we desire is one that equips our parishes and the diocese to function in this world where the old answers may no longer be the best answers.

This process may take a little longer than we anticipated. We had hoped to have a mission and vision crafted by Pentecost, but that would be forcing the process and may not result in a mission and vision that will address our needs. Instead, the Executive Board will work on our diocesan mission and vision at its June 23rd meeting, and as necessary, continue the work over the summer, gathering any other information we need to move forward. By early fall, we should have the mission and vision in place, and will be able to deploy our congregational and diocesan resources to build toward our common vision.