Between Us – Envisioning First Parish’s Future
By Rev. Clyde Grubbs, September 29, 2023
At the August leadership retreat, the Parish Committee had some very good discussions about Mission and Vision. These discussions built on and deepened the discussions we had last year. What is vision? What is a mission?
Vision is what the congregation wants to be in the future. The visioning exercise helps the congregation’s leaders articulate what will be constant in the congregation in the near future, and what is missing and needs to be nurtured. Two “want to be but not yet” visions emerged. The Parish Committee members saw a future First Parish that would be multi-generational; that means there would be more young adult members and more children. They also saw a First Parish that was more involved in and better known among the people in the towns surrounding First Parish.
What is mission? Mission is the statement about who you serve. Does First Parish serve a purpose and a community? The purpose that the Parish Committee articulated was that it saw FP sharing Unitarian Universalist values and ideas with the surrounding community.
There are many examples of this: hanging the Rainbow flag from the meeting house, participating in the Neponset River Watershed Association, joining the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace. To serve the community is to serve all generations, and our hope is to offer OWL (Our Whole Lives) to young people drawn from the community as well as from partner congregations.
First Parish has had these discussions before, and one can look at the results in several documents on our website. However, written statements that are not used to guide congregational leadership in their actions quickly become forgotten.
To move forward, the Parish Committee has organized itself into two working teams, one on long-term visioning for the next few years and one on practical steps to take in the coming months. Both teams had good first meetings, and both teams look forward to continued discussions with the congregation for inspiration and feedback.
I hope you join in these discussions!
Rev. Clyde