Strategic Planning Process Announced!

An Announcement from Moderator Nancy Dittes & Senior Pastor Rev Jack Perkins Davidson
 

Dear Spring Glen Church community,

ANNOUNCING THE STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

We write to share important and exciting news about Spring Glen Church’s future and associated opportunities for you to help envision and shape that future. Buoyed by SGC’s participation in the months-long Reimagining Church initiative spearheaded by Yale Divinity School (results of which you will read about in the Annual Meeting packet), we are launching a strategic planning process designed to move us, as a church community, from imagining to planning and from dreaming to doing. As we emerge from disruptive and disorienting “Covid times” and dare once again to look ahead with hopeful anticipation of what lies ahead, we are convinced it will be helpful to have a roadmap to guide us and also to unite us as a community of faith. Together we will learn and lean into what God is calling us to be and do. Strategic planning represents an opportunity for us to reconnect as a community and to dream and discern together. Of course, possibilities and dreams for our future do not constitute a plan. We will need a roadmap to guide us toward the destination that represents our shared vision for Spring Glen Church; and we will need to ensure the destination we aspire to reach is aligned with our ability to get there. We will need well-defined goals, clear priorities, concrete action plans, and resources with which to carry out the plan. 
THE PROCESSWe have crafted a proposal for a strategic planning process which has been approved by the Trustees and Council and will be presented to the Congregation during our May Annual Meeting.  A task force will be convened and charged with leading the process for developing a strategic plan.  Task force members will be diverse along multiple dimensions and as broadly representative of our church community, and of the varied ways parishioners engage in the life of the church, as possible and practical. We are grateful to all who have agreed to serve on the task force, and we particularly appreciate Jim Kenny’s willingness to serve as chair of the group. The task force is an advisory group, not a decision-making body. Its recommendations and critical outputs will be brought to the Council for debate and ultimately to the congregation for endorsement. Importantly, it will serve as the primary link between the planning process and the wider Spring Glen congregation, offering opportunities for input and engagement throughout.

THE CONSULTANT

To help us navigate this process, we have identified a highly qualified strategic planning consultant who happens also to understand and embrace Spring Glen’s mission. After receiving recommendations from several UCC leaders and conducting interviews with several people, the person who clearly stood out as having the best strategy to support our efforts was Linda Campanella of SOS Consulting Group in West Hartford. Linda grew up in the UCC (confirmed at First Church in Longmeadow, MA). At Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, where she currently is a member, she chaired an Inclusiveness Task Force, led several stewardship-related initiatives, served as vice moderator and then, in the late 2000s, as moderator; she currently is a member of the Pastoral Relations Committee. For 11 years Linda was a trustee of Andover Newton Seminary, where she served as chair of the Institutional Advancement Committee, vice chairman, and finally, until June of last year, chairman of the board.We have had the chance to get to know and work with Linda during the past month, and we feel confident SGC and our strategic planning process could not be in better hands. Linda will ensure the process is inclusive, comprehensive, expedient, and transparent. At the same time, she understands and appreciates that our staff is tired and stretched thin, many of our lay leaders are drained, and many of you are dealing with a mix of complex feelings and questions--about life, about faith, about society, and about our church.   

YOUR ROLE

We strongly encourage you to look for and take advantage of any and all opportunities and invitations to engage in the planning process during coming months.

~ You may start by reading and thinking about the Reimagining Church team’s “We Imagine/Wonder” document, which will be posted in full on the SGC web site as a way to jumpstart your own brainstorming about creative possibilities.

~ Soon you will be invited to sign up for and participate in one of several scheduled “Dream and Discern” discussions (in-person and virtual) in early June, a principal goal of which will be to broaden the imagining of Spring Glen’s future to include the whole congregation. These inclusive visioning sessions will be hosted and facilitated by the Strategic Planning Task Force in collaboration with Linda.

~ Later in June you will have an opportunity to share additional thoughts via an online and anonymous survey for parishioners.

The planning task force and Linda will be hard at work over the summer, and you will be kept fully apprised of progress as well as any opportunities for input or feedback. Our goal is for a draft strategic plan to be presented to Council for review and approval in September and then shared with the congregation, probably in conjunction with launching of the fall stewardship campaign.We hope you share our excitement about all of this, and we especially hope you look forward to engaging with us and fellow parishioners in charting a future course for the church we all love.

Blessings,
Nancy Dittes

Moderator & Chair of Council, she/her
Council@SpringGlenChurch.org

Rev Jack Perkins Davidson
Senior Pastor, he/him/his
Jack@SpringGlenChurch.org
203-903-8044