Courtesy photos
Imagine scrolling through the news feed on your phone and seeing a headline about Episcopalians in eastern Massachusetts that made you proud to be part of this diocese and excited to click and learn more. What would that headline be?
This is just one of a number of exercises offered at a one-day Visioning Summit held earlier this month at Babson College, and led by consultants from Ministry Architects. More than 55 lay and ordained leaders from many corners of the diocese were invited by Bishop Julia Whitworth to share in a day of brainstorming shared values, objectives and missional language for the Diocese of Massachusetts--all part of the year-long visioning process in which the diocesan community is engaged together.
Bishop Whitworth opened the day by welcoming the assembled group with words of gratitude and hopefulness about the wisdom, energy and thoughtfulness that God gathered together in the room. Through the course of the morning, consultants led the group in several exercises designed to generate language articulating core values that participants want to see shaping life together as a diocese. Additional assignments, which blended individual reflection and small group discussions, led to brainstorming a wide range of ministry objectives and missional goals for the diocese. After lunch, these were further refined through straw polls and discussions. An additional afternoon session was focused around core missional identity. The day concluded with Bishop Whitworth inviting the group to read the "Blessing for a Leader" by John O’Donohue.
“I was greatly impressed by the energy, creativity and willingness to stay with the process through the long day. Surely good things will be the result from this effort," said Constance Perry, a longtime lay leader in racial reconciliation work in the diocese and more broadly in The Episcopal Church.
Summit participants came from all three regions of the diocese, and included current and former parish wardens, clergy, volunteer diocesan leaders and senior members of the Bishop’s Office. The vast majority of diocesan governance bodies, committees, commissions and task forces was represented in the room, along with people who helped lead the recently conducted Holy Cow! Landscape Survey and the Bishop Search Listening Process--both also important sources of data for the shaping of mission, vision and values as the Diocese of Massachusetts.
Perhaps one of the particular blessings of the day was the opportunity to share hopes, concerns and dreams in a room of priests, deacons and lay people, alongside the bishop. The consultants mixed up the table groups regularly, both so that people interacted with everyone else in the room, and so that ideas and language were moving around and being edited, refined and improved throughout the day. Former church warden and parish youth leader Emily Mitchell noted, “As a lay person, I appreciated the sense of collegiality and connection I felt from all participants.”
The Visioning Summit marked another step in the year-long process of re-articulating diocesan mission, vision and values. The process began with a series of more than 30 listening sessions hosted in March by the Ministry Architects consultants at various locations around the diocese and online, in which more than 300 people participated in hour-long small group conversations. The report from those listening sessions, noting common themes and yearnings, was released to the diocese in April. Following May’s Visioning Summit, the consultants will continue to build on the work of the larger group gathering with the Bishop’s Office, in preparation for conversation with Diocesan Council at its June meeting. Work will continue with Council and the Bishop’s Office in preparation for sharing with the wider diocese in the fall.