nurturing growth group
september to december 2006
From the December 2006 Newsletter:
Regular readers will remember from last month's newsletter that as a congregation we are in the midst of exploring the theme of 'nurturing growth'. Back in July we held two vision meetings and in those sessions we created a chart showing key areas of our community life and work and ways we would like to develop and grow (copies of which are still available). This autumn we have held five meetings which culminated in a worship service. There have been three key messages underpinning all of this exploration - firstly that change is inevitable in any organisation; nothing ever stays the same anyway. The second idea is that we are already perfect; this is a delightful and loving community, nothing is wrong, there is nothing to 'fix'. But we are proud of our faith and our community and we want to share that with others. The final idea is that there is something empowering about choosing intentionally to engage creatively with change and about actively making choices of the direction we want to go in.
At one of the evening sessions we were asked to list the achievements of this congregation and what follows is a list of just some of the things we came up with. It was such a simple exercise and yet it took us on a profound path, of valuing what we have together here at Essex Church. We decided to make this an on-going list so do pass your ideas on to the minister or a committee member - what are you proud of in this community of ours?
These are just some of the items we listed - what do you like about this congregation, what would you list as one of our achievements? We have been asked to write about the congregation here at Essex Church for 'The Unitarian' monthly magazine in the new year and hope to use these achievements as the basis of that report so do let us know what it is that makes this community special for you. Whether you are new here, or have been a member for thirty years, we would like to hear what it is that has drawn you here and has you get up and join us on a Sunday morning or makes you want to subscribe to this newsletter even if you can't join us for worship.
- "Love is our biggest achievement."
- "We turned things around to be a loving functioning group again after things were quite bleak for a while."
- "I'm proud of people who stayed here through the tough times as well as people who came back after leaving for a while"
- "We took our time to engage in a healing process, making sure everyone felt heard, using outside facilitation effectively"
- "We started talking together again and reminded ourselves of our spiritual richness."
- "Building the manse flat was a huge achievement." (This can be verified by your minister who is so delighted to be living in it. Tours can be arranged!)
- "We have excellent communications - newsletter, website notice boards, order of service sheet etc."
- "The high quality of our music in worship each week is regularly commented on by visitors."
- "We like the variety of groups that we run including various engagement groups that have been running for some while now very effectively."
- "We manage ourselves efficiently."
- "Our building has been open for nearly thirty years and is a useful resource for many other groups."
- "We're committed to serving the needs of children and their families and are one of the few congregations prepared to pay our children's leader."
- "We are making progress on many issues including fund raising projects such as the Art and Craft Fair which has been a fun and successful way of raising money for our Garden Fund."
Rev. Sarah Tinker
last updated: 03 Aug 2009
