Goals for Our Next Five Years
adopted May 2011
The Vision Team has identified the following goals based on our year-long congregational visioning process. In these goals, we seek to: build on our identified strengths; extend our passion for love, peace and justice; strengthen our community in care and spiritual life; and affirm our differing gifts, life stages, and life circumstances.
Goal 1: Deepen the gift of community and care for one another
- Through our Christian Education program, expand our practice of faith exploration for children, teenagers, families, and people of all stages of life
- Equip laity and clergy to collaborate more fully in spiritual care and worship life
- Create a small group ministry program that offers opportunities for community building and faith sharing
Goal 2: Enrich our relationship with our immediate neighborhood
- Express our values visibly through our physical space inside and outside
- Act as partner to neighborhood organizations working to build community in Marcy Holmes
- Create a regular rhythm of events that offer meals and other forms of hospitality
- Encourage building use by community groups
Goal 3: Explore campus ministry possibilities
- Connect to UCC students coming to the University of MN
- Design a ministry targeted toward LGBT students
- Participate in an emerging discussion around campus ministry initiatives in the Minnesota Conference UCC
Goal 4: Live out more fully our core value of social justice
- Charge the Board of Christian Involvement to build a sustained relationship with an organization they identify, integrating an action/reflection model for participants that emphasizes mutual transformation
- Continue to provide a variety of regular hands-on service opportunities in the wider community
- Create space in our schedule to recognize and reflect on how we as individuals live out our values
- Celebrate and make more accessible community outreach efforts already underway
- Identify certain advocacy organizations to which we would make a congregational commitment
- Create a long-term plan to examine the reality of racial and economic privilege in our congregation and community
- Investigate alternative energy for our building and other ways to be more sustainable
