Strategic Planning - as we move ahead into our Covenant.

Congregational Feedback on Areas of Focus – December 2021 The attached comments came to the Strategic Planning Team in December 2021 through small group discussions after church and written comments sent by email. 

See attached Document

Hi Committee Chairs,

I’m writing to you on behalf of the Strategic Planning team, which has been at work for the past few months on CCG’s path forward with respect to our new covenant. We are not making decisions on behalf of the congregation, rather we are assessing our current state with regards to the covenant and considering where it would serve us best to put our energy. We have come to a place in our process where we would very much like input from the church committees.

In the next day or so we will be sending the committee chairs the work we have done so far in discerning the strengths and challenges of CCG with respect to the four areas of the covenant, along with some intentional steps we could take to further align ourselves with our covenant. We would like feedback from the committees on this work and will provide some questions for the committees to consider.

We would also like the committees to look at their committee mandate and purpose alongside the covenant and consider how the two relate. Some relevant questions might be: Where is your committee’s work within the covenant? How might your committee live more fully into the covenant? How might your committee’s work need to be adjusted? The Strategic Planning team believes it’s important for the committees to have the opportunity to weigh in on these matters before the congregation begins discerning CCG’s next intentional steps.

We would greatly appreciate you gathering your committees for a special meeting to consider these two matters. Several of the committees already have representation on the Strategic Planning team; for those who don’t, a representative of the Planning team will be available to you as a resource (even join your meeting if you like) as you engage with the material. We are hoping to have committee input back to us by Thanksgiving (Oct 11).

Please feel free to contact me with questions. Thanks very much for helping us with this work.

thanks & blessings,

Karen, on behalf of the Strategic Planning Team 

(Pat, Mona, Jean, David, Shelagh, Angela, Lisa)

Strategic Planning Update:
Some in the congregation have asked, "is the Strategic Planning team going to DECIDE 
the direction of the church?" No, we alone are not going to decide. Our mandate is to 
propose to the congregation strategic steps that can move us forward. We will consult 
with Church Committees, and the Congregation is welcome to give input at any point. In 
addition, the team is continuing to keep in mind the Diocese Transforming 
Futures project and what the Church might be able to accomplish in collaboration with 
our wider community.
The Strategic Planning team (Karen H., Mona S., Angela N., Shelagh H., David S., Jean 
R., Pat A., Lisa G.) has been following a process outlined by Karen. The process starts 
with a SOC analysis (Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities). Initially, the team looked at 
the Covenant through the lens of the congregations’ strengths and challenges in order 
to figure out first steps toward living out the Covenant. For example, we discussed 
which strengths can the congregation lean on the most? What is holding us back? What 
values or beliefs give us momentum - or create roadblocks? Then, given our 
understanding of the congregation’s particular strengths and challenges, we 
brainstormed opportunities. This process generated animated, fruitful conversations.
As a strategic planning team, our next step is to share our ideas with each of the 
committees. We want to understand how the Committees envision their work fitting 
within the Covenant, how they think that work/mandate might change, what ideas they 
have, and which of our ideas resonate with them. We will then combine all the idea