Dear Friends in Christ,

Do you remember what you said about Grace Church in last year’s visioning process?  I do.  And our vestry does, too.

This week, I ordered a poster to hung in the Saint Mark’s Room, where the vestry meets.  The poster shows our mission statement and the priorities established in the visioning process:

LOVE

• Community and Belonging
• Bridges for Grace and La Gracia
• Generational Engagement

 PROCLAIM

• Spiritual Formation
• Institutional Knowledge and Communication

SERVE

• Neighborhood Outreach

BY . . .

• Sustainable Programs
• Physical Space

I made this poster because I want to keep in front of us—literally—the guide for our work together.

My hope is that we will use these priorities as a way of both directing and evaluating our choices.  Trying to make a tough budget call?  Ask whether it helps us create community and belonging.  Trying to make a decision about our facility use?  As if it supports our dream of neighborhood outreach.

The extent to which we love, proclaim, and serve God is the extent to which we are becoming the church want to be.

As the vestry communicates with the parish, I hope you will continue to hear about these priorities.  We are spending a lot of time right now addressing the two “roots”—sustainable programs and physical space.  These two areas make all our ministry possible.

I am glad that we dreamed together—and I hope we keep at the long, slow, challenging, rewarding work of living into our dreams.

Yours in Christ,

Anne+