August 27 Update

By Bill Sewell

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The Discernment Committee has been meeting twice monthly. Joselyn Schaeffer, the Rector atGrace-Waynesville and our committee consultant,  has joined our meetings via zoom to provide assistance and answer  questions. Eighty-one parish members completed the  online Congregational Assessment Tool(CAT) developed by Holy Cow Consultants. The analysis of the CAT (detail and summary) is available for review on the church website. The findings told us things we already know, like how welcoming we are and that we’re just an awesome church, but also gave us insight as to things we need to work on, be cautious of, or  people would like to see improved. The committee used this information along with guidelines from the Diocese to form questions for the Holy Conversations.

 

Two Holy Conversation sessions were held in August with approximately fifty members participating in small group discussions. An additional session will be held following the Sunday service on September 8. If you have not attended and wish to participate, please let us know at searchholyspiritwnc@gmail.com.

Our next step is to gather the thoughts and responses from the CAT and the Holy Conversations along with demographic data, our parish history, financial and other data to “tell our story”, to develop a parish profile which will be available on the church website and to complete the Office of Transition Ministry (OTM) database entry available throughout the
Episcopal Church. Our goal is to complete this step by the end of September so that we can begin accepting submissions from interested priests later this Fall.

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June 29 Update

by Deidre Soileau

 

CAT Update

The Discernment Committee is thrilled that 81 people took time to fill out the CAT (Congregational Assessment Survey)! We do not have any results yet, and we won’t,until the Holy Cow Consulting Company formally presents them to us in a Zoom meeting on July 13. The committee will take the CAT results, and working with Rev. Joslyn, develop a set of questions that need to be explored in more detail. These questions will become the basis for our Holy Conversations (small group discussions) in August.

 

Holy Conversations

We will hold two sessions with approximately 36 people each. Each session will include a meal (we provide an entrée, and sides and dessert will be potluck), and will take place at Mars Hill Baptist. Each of the six Discernment Committee members will “host” a table to facilitate the discussion. We are planning for these sessions to occur in mid-August, on different weeks. We will hold at least one “make up” session for those who couldn’t make either of the formal dates.

 

Profile

In the meantime, the committee is beginning to identify possible formats and categories for the profile, and working very preliminarily on the demographic, history, and finance sections. Some of you may be helping with those already! Tentative Timeline August and September are going to be really busy. These are the months when we will be most actively developing the Parish Profile. We will be reaching out to many of you to help with the various sections. We will also be undergoing Anti-Bias training provided by the Diocese, and we will start to develop questions to ask candidates in Zoom interviews. In October, the job should be posted and run for 6 weeks. We hope to conduct Zoom interviews in mid-November. The goal is to make recommendations to the Vestry in January.

 

As always, pray for God’s guidance through the search process, ask questions, provide input, and be patient. Thank you!

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June 3 Update

by Bill Sewell

 

Your Discernment Committee met for several hours this week with one of our counselors, Rev. Joslyn Schaefer, who is Rector at Grace Church in Waynesville. She assured us that she is going to assist us and be with us for the entire journey. Additionally, Canon Augusta will be back from her sabbatical sometime in late August and will be with us for the rest of the process. Of course Bishop Jose keeps us in his prayers and has us on his radar. We have a lot of help as we move along.

At our meeting, we discussed the spiritual basis for what we're doing and the role of this church in our lives and in the community. We worked for a bit on a timeline of where we've been and, and where we're planning to go and talked about the process.

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At the risk of, of stretching the metaphor a little bit, it's time for us to unpack the oars and get everybody to work on moving the ship along. There are a couple of opportunities coming up where you'll have the opportunity – No! -- where you will each have the RESPONSIBILITY to provide your input.

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For the first one, we've engaged a group called Holy Cow! Consulting (I can't make this stuff up!) and we are going to work with them to develop, administer and analyze an online survey which we want and expect everyone to participate in. That means that if you don't find the time to complete it on your own, then you're likely to be cornered as you get ready to leave church one day. or we'll set up an appointment to meet you at the coffee shop or for us to come knock on your door.

We want everyone to participate in this online survey. It takes probably takes about 20 minutes; 80 something questions. Everyone needs to participate. This is your opportunity for input.

Following that, probably in August, we will have a couple of dinners that we're calling Holy Conversations where we will get into small groups and go through some scripted questions to give everyone the responsibility to share their thoughts as we continue this journey together.

 

The Discernment Committee will be meeting at least a couple of times each month for the next several months. Our names are in the bulletin. If there are any thoughts or questions or concerns that you have, please get back to one or more of us so that we can continue this journey together.

Thank you.