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spring 2010

Parish Life

2020 Vision

by Elizabeth Robertson

Strategic Thinking Group

In the spring of 2008, the vestry appointed the Strategic Thinking Group (STG) to examine the mission of the parish. On January 3, 2010, the STG chair Leighton Stradtman, along with committee members and wardens Florence Holmes and Jim Zook, presented the Strategic Thinking Group Report to the parish. The following excerpts from the Overview of the Report explain the process and the core recommendations.

“For more than a year, your Strategic Thinking Group has engaged in research, discernment, dialogue, and prayer with you, the parishioners of All Saints’… and the vestry, clergy and staff. We gladly affirm that Al l Saints’ is a strong, faithful and vital community. The intent of this report is to outline the strengths, needs and resources identified through our process, and to suggest means of building and growing those strengths to live and serve God, our members, our community and our world.

After the conclusion of a thorough assessment of our physical property by our Space Use Committee, the rector and vestry appointed the STG to examine the mission of the parish, taking into consideration trends in the universal church, our nation, and the world. Since then, our group has engaged in a broad parish-wide discernment process with a central purpose of identifying and naming our priorities to ensure that All Saints’ will continue to be a thriving Christian community for future generations. Through discussion groups, a comprehensive parish survey and many meetings with parish leaders, we have attempted to conduct a structured dialogue to elicit the needs and desires of the entire parish. We have sought ideas from you on how best to express our mission, improve our offerings, and reach out and bear witness to others. One of the main tasks of the STG was to attempt to clarify and express our congregation’s common commitment to mission through our programs and facilities. This required us to address internal issues regarding the further development of All Saints’ many strengths as well as external issues regarding ongoing and significant cultural change in the Episcopal Church and our society.

With your ideas and insights, we have realized that to preserve the vibrancy of our parish, we cannot simply rely on our historical ways of planning and executing worship, ministry, formation and parish life. As the demands of modern life present increasing and continually evolving challenges and opportunities for people of all ages, as well as growing demands for their time and attention, our community must be more intentional about the ways in which it serves its members and its neighbors. Our increasingly multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-religious world requires that we become more confident in our Christian faith while at the same time being open to engage those different from us wherever we may encounter them in our journey.

Our recommendations flow from a central idea: We should organize our ministry and mission around the core vision that we live as a worshiping community formed for Christian faith through engaging God and neighbor. While the STG considered all attributes and features that make All Saints’ the community we love, our report focuses on priorities in five categories:

  1. Our Formation;
  2. Our Worship;
  3. Our Community and Leadership;
  4. Our Communication; and
  5. Our Campus.

These priorities are intended to suggest how All Saints’ should dedicate its limited resources for programming, community-building, spiritual development and service in the years ahead. We have intentionally not recommended how best to implement these priorities or prescribe specific action steps and timelines in this report. Rather, we envision the detailed interpretation and implementation of these priorities to be the purview of the standing committees of the parish, certain ad hoc groups, and the vestry, clergy and staff. To organize that work, we strongly recommend the creation of a standing planning committee that will coordinate the implementation phase of this process and thereafter review and modify the priorities as needed.

While our group was specifically charged to make recommendations to the vestry, we believe and trust that this report reflects the thoughts and wishes of the entire congregation. The work that has gone into this process represents our collective attempt, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to chart an overall direction for our journey together. As we turn to the next phase of our process, we invite you to help discern the particular routes that we should take.”

As Leighton Stradtman observed, “I’m struck and humbled by the depth of our parishioners’ passion for All Saints’ and its ministries. And the way that skilled and dedicated individuals have stepped forward to help us clear every hurdle we’ve encountered in our planning process has been nothing short of providential.”

The twenty-five page report, which is posted on the All Saints’ website (www.allsaintsatlanta.org), outlines our identity and purpose, a vision of our ministry, and the group’s specific recommendations. As was recommended through the Strategic Thinking Group Report, a standing committee to coordinate the implementation of the priorities is currently being organized.

At its January meeting, the vestry approved Elizabeth Robertson as the Chair of this ongoing committee. The vestry also approved Clay Jackson to head the Campus Plan Sub-Committee and Emily Roselli to head the Young Adult Sub-Committee. It is anticipated that the wardens will recommend the balance of the committee for approval at the February vestry meeting. This committee, to be known as the “2020 Vision Committee,” will have two primary tasks.

The first is to keep the vestry, staff and congregation accountable for continuing to build on our foundation as a worshipping community of Christian faith and to engage God and our neighbors wherever we find them. The second is to develop and implement the recommendations of the Report that are not part of specific ongoing programs. Initially, the 2020 Vision Committee members will work through several individual sub-committees to address the specific recommendations included in the Report:

A number of parishioners will necessarily be involved in the work of All Saints’ 2020 Vision Committee. Whether as part of a sub-committee or a source of program information, members of the congregation will have many opportunities to participate throughout the course of the work as resources to explore or implement the additions to the life of the parish.

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