Building Our Bright Future Through Team Work
This past Tuesday a dozen of us from the Long Range Planning Team and Vestry met to discuss next steps with our Visioning process for the coming year. We spent time looking at the ministries that were identified as priorities during our Visioning Day but we also spent a lot of time talking about how best to organize ourselves as leadership so that we are able to coordinate our efforts across various ministries, invite and engage anyone in the parish who wants to get involved, and spread out the workload in a sensible and helpful way.
A lot of wonderful ministries and initiatives were discussed during Visioning Day but we will not be able to implement them all at the same time – it’s simply not a practical approach to growing a program or ministry in a parish. And so we fairly quickly focused on the need to create teams of interested parishioners in each area of ministry who will work together to support current initiatives and work to build and implement some new ideas in each area of ministry.
Some of these ministry teams (Outreach, Worship, Pastoral Care, Fellowship, and Formation) already have some identified leaders who have been involved in supporting current efforts in the parish. Sue and Marty Broward in Outreach, Jim Grayshaw in Formation, DeeDee Herndon and Valerie Crowe in Pastoral Care to name just a few. We’re grateful for the efforts folks like these have put in over the years to enable St. Alfred’s to offer so much in the way of learning, and fellowship, and Pastoral Care, and Outreach, but if we are going to develop new ministries and strengthen existing ones, we’ll need to expand the opportunities for other members of the parish to get involved, bringing their gifts and energy to the work.
If you were present for Visioning Day and signed your name to a ministry initiative, you will be receiving an email from me inviting you to consider being part of the new leadership team working in one of the five areas of ministry at St. Alfred’s. Just to be clear, you won’t be required to join the team but your interest in one or more programs in an area of ministry seems to be a logical place to start to build leadership teams in the parish.
If you were not present at Visioning Day but would like to be involved in one of the ministry teams that are forming, you are certainly and unequivocally invited to lend your gifts and energy to a team. The best way to make your interest known is to send an email or give a call to Andi Van Airsdale in the office (ar@stalfreds.net, or 727-785-1601, ext. 6).
Joining one of the ministry teams is a great way to ensure that you’ll be able to get involved in an area of ministry that feeds your soul and gives you that wonderful sense of making a difference in the lives of others, but you can also fulfill that desire by simply volunteering to help out with various programs or ministries at St. Alfred’s. In other words, we’re going to need the creativity, energy, support, and gifts of all of our members, long-time and brand new alike, to live into the vision that God is helping us realize at St. Alfred’s.
I hope you, like me and so many others at St. Alfred’s, continue to feel the excitement and energy that is moving through our parish. God has wonderful things in store for us, and together we will discover and create exactly what God has in mind, and who wouldn’t want to be involved with such work?!
See you in Church.
Faithfully,
Fr. Peter
