Annual Meeting

We had our annual meeting on Sunday and it is an incredible experience to watch a group of people come together to create something much bigger than each one of us individually. We have much more direction and clarity since developing our new vision and mission. We spent time examining the progress we made toward our goals and we can see how we are moving forward. Our goals are structured very differently which allowed for a real sense of success. They are no longer about things over which we have no control like attendance markers, rather they define specific actions we as a group want to take in order to be in integrity with our vision and purpose. We approved our values and will spend time learning what it means to live them. Our core values are: love, inclusive community, Spirit-led, stewardship and service. We will go through a whole process to own them and to live them in the daily life of our church community and our personal lives.

We had a conversation around being an inclusive community. I have reported on this blog my journey into veganism. Several others within the congregation have made that lifestyle choice as well. We discussed how to have different choices like this without sending a message that all had to choose in this way in order to be accepted in the group. It is funny how unwritten rules can developed if we are not conscious of that process. All and all it was a time of reflection, celebration and looking toward our future.