Strategic Plan Update- Strategy #1
Strategy #1 – Energize the Sunday Morning experience in order to create a more hospitable, diverse, and spiritually enriching experience.
For Christians, worship, especially corporate worship, is fundamental to our faith and to our membership in a church community. For Episcopalians, the traditional worship liturgy is strengthened by the sermon, music, and prayers.
However, we at St. James aspire to something more – an energy that sends us into the world to live and preach the Gospel and to realize the full potential of our church community.
To that end, the Strategic Planning Group has offered recommendations in these areas to the Vestry:
- the centrality of the sermon;
- the use of both traditional and timely prayers;
- the critical importance of music;
- a congregation invigorated by more young families, singles, and even local college students;
- consideration of a choice of times and types of services to appeal to a parish with different family and personal needs and schedules.
The Vestry is currently studying our recommendations and will create the final strategic plan for St. James. They will encourage your suggestions too, at [email protected].
In the SPG’s self-evaluation and research into other churches, we considered many ways to meet the needs of our parishioners and to attract new members. That said, we assert in our plan the primary importance of excellence – we can’t do everything, but “anything worth doing is worth doing well” – and the historic character of our 300-year-old church. We must be true to ourselves.