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Open Doors is opening its doors to the congregation and the listening has begun!
The second session is this Sunday.
We are excited to continue the Open Doors Working Group (ODWG) work with you! Many of you were at our brief presentation following the budget vote on Sunday February 2nd and probably also heard Will’s sermon on February 9th, in which he highlighted some of the challenges we face as a congregation of about 400 members and participants housed in a building designed and built for a congregation of about 2700. Having received input from some key groups, like the Ministry Team, we have now begun to seek input from the congregation.
We are at a critical point and we need your help. We are faced with an aging building with outdated, unsafe systems and we see growing needs in surrounding communities. Each member of our congregation is an important part of our community and we need your involvement in discerning where God is leading us. We feel called by God to address boldly the challenges that the building presents and we are excited about the opportunity it offers us to live more faithfully into our calling as a community. The questions are hard, but faithful solutions, built with careful planning, conservation and further development of our wonderful programming will help our church to continue to thrive and grow..
We had the first of two meetings this week on zoom. The second meeting will be in the Tucker room following worship on Sunday 2nd March. If you didn’t get to the zoom meeting, we hope you can join us on Sunday. Meanwhile, we’d love you to start thinking and praying about these questions which we expect to be the basis of our discussion:
- As we consider changes to the building that may be significant – we need to know what is valuable to you at FCCW. What keeps you coming back?
- The building of FCCW is used by many in the community. What kind of community resource do you believe FCCW should be? Why?
- With our congregation being smaller than what the building was designed for, we have managed to do the bare minimum of maintenance, handicapped access remains challenging and modernization has largely been out of reach. What building space do we need? Now and in the future?
- FCCW is engaged in multiple ways in outreach. In your view, what are the biggest needs of our local region that would benefit from the church’s involvement or investment?
These are not decision-making meetings, but rather a chance to share our ideas, passions and insights about where God is leading us as we consider the future of our church, especially as it relates to our building. Please join us!
ODWG: Andrew (Sansom), Ben (Keeler) – chair, Jonathan (Goodell), Penny (Sparrow), Renee (Spaulding)
Open Doors is part of an effort spearheaded by the Leadership Team to ‘envision a future of our church and specifically our church facility that reflects our values, supports intentional/modern uses of the facility, and amplifies God’s glory via our many blessings.’ The Open Doors Working Group ‘will focus on listening, gathering resources, and driving conversation on the “doors” FCCW can open, or walk through in the future’.
