Objectives Revisited

I’ve written about our leadership team’s work setting core values and objectives.  Last Friday, we held another meeting to set new objectives for this quarter, and evaluate the ones we were using. 

Objectives are important because they help orient an organization and build momentum. They should be rooted in our core values, be achievable and quantifiable.

Evaluating

It’d been about three months, enough time to see how we’d done on accomplishing our first three objectives.

1. Hymns in Worship

We had discerned that some among us didn’t feel at home anymore, and music played a part in that. So we would intentionally include at least one hymn done in a traditional style.

I thought we did really well on this one.  Folks had shown gratitude for the effort. But, as we chatted more, it became clear that simply doing a hymn from the hymnbook didn’t always meet the need.   One Sunday, we did three hymns from the book, but someone still asked afterwards if we could sing a hymn.  The issue wasn’t whether we did hymns from the book, but whether we did hymns that evoke the sacred for the folks who worship with us.

So, the leadership team opted to go back to the congregation.

We each have our own inner repertoire of sacred music.  Since we need to purge our music files anyways, we’re asking the folks at Burns which songs we should make sure we keep.

2. Ashburn Canada Day Picnic

We had an amazing time at the Canada Day picnic that takes place in the village where we worship (I’ve written about it here).  The congregation did the BBQ and had lots of fun doing it.

Our original objective was to infuse a bit more fun into the event.  While there were races for kids of different age groups, we still saw a need for the kinds of things families could come back to throughout the event. We decided to investigate getting more deeply involved next year.

3. Prayer Emphasis

Prayer is one of our core values, and we want to nurture a culture of prayer.  In addition to personal stories about praying, and a prayer request box in the foyer, we prayed for 5-6 families from our roll each week.  We sent a card to each of them, letting them know we had prayed for them. 

On a number of occasions, people who had been away for a while made a point of worshipping with us, letting us know how much they appreciated that we were praying for them.  More than once, I had a person approach me and say, “Getting that card was just what I needed, considering the week I was having.”

This was a success, and one we’ll continue. 

Hearing the Context

Afterwards, we took time revisit the reports from a bunch of listening exercises in May and June: an online survey to our community, a Natural Church Development survey, and attending a Stewards-by-Design conference run through our denomination. 

Setting New Objectives

Finally came the crux of the evening.  What were the needs we’d heard from these reports and from our congregation?  After grouping similar ones together, we ranked them.  Here are the top three:

1. Communication.

People are attending who use a variety of media, and as we transition from a village to a regional church, it was clear we needed to amp up our game in a few ways:

a.     Rework the website. 

An elder is forming a team to recommend what our new, online “front door” should look like.

b.     Merge email communication. 

We don’t want to be “that” church with multiple emails and duplicated details .  A strategy was developed to place all “church family” news in the weekly email.

c.      Weekly print bulletin

The same “church family” news will be available by print every week.  Right now, we only use projected slides, but many commented they missed taking something home on paper. 

We agreed to change it.

d.     Monthly print newsletter

We’d shift the focus of this to be for those in our wider community.  As momentum builds, we’ll need a vehicle to let the community know what’s happening.

2. Broader Ownership.  

We realized that for objectives to work in our whole congregation, more of the key players needed to be on board.  Burns has always been pretty democratic, so it didn’t surprise me that we felt more congregational support was needed.  Thankfully, Dr. Callahan recommends the same, so I felt pretty confident this was a good direction. 

We’re working on a strategic planning meeting in the fall and will bring in a facilitator to help us.

      3. Activities.

Burns has always been blessed with people who have get-up-and-go.  The women are talking about a weekly exercise and fellowship gathering. The men are talking about how to partner with a local agency that serves families living with autism.  The women are planning a trip to a dinner theater.  The men are planning to go bowling.  There is no shortage of activity.

That makes the leadership team’s job straight forward: support what the Spirit is doing among the grass roots!  So we are.

One meeting isn’t the end of the story, but during that time we sensed the Spirit’s leading, allowing our congregation to move in a direction the whole team could get behind. 

How very Presbyterian!