Minutes, March 11, 2010

Mission Task Force Minutes

March 11, 2010
St. Paul’s, Pawtucket

Attended: Modesta Pellot, Diocesan Council; Bill Locke+, Chaplain; Pam Mott+, Aquidneck Deanery; Jennifer Pedrick+, Standing Committee, Chair; Fran Gammell-Roach, Standing Committee; Susan Wright, West Bay Deanery, Secretary; Ricky Brightman, Narragansett Deanery; Brian Ehlers, Bishop’s Appointment, Master Blogger; Scott Nicholson, Bishop’s Appointment
Absent: Buck Close, Blackstone Deanery, David Isherwood, East Bay Deanery, Jim Segovis, Central Deanery;

The meeting opened at 7 pm with Worship in the Chapel. This was followed by brief sharing about how God and we are using this season of Lent to prepare for new life in Christ.

Jennifer Pedrick+ reported that Susan Carpenter+ has had to resign from this committee due to her recent appointment as a diocesan employee for ECC.

We discussed progress on development of the listening process that we will use for this task. Ricky had compiled a list of the responses to our questions (attached) that were available at Convocation. A small sample answered the questions. We shared insights that we gained from our Convocation speaker, Reggie McNeal. We reviewed and revised our listening questions. They are 1) what were you doing when you felt most passionate and alive in the spirit? 2) What is your congregation doing that you can celebrate and share with other parishes? 3) What could we do as RI Episcopalians that would bring us together and would make a difference in our community and the world? We decided that this part of the listening process would be completed by the end of May.

To promote wide participation in the listening process there will be 6 regional meeting, one in each deanery. They will be held in the parishes of the MTF deanery representatives and Fran Gammell-Roach will contact each deanery representative to schedule open meetings for this purpose. In the meantime, each member of this task force will sit down with his/her clergy person(s) and wardens and ask for their participation by answering the questions and promoting the open forum in the parish and deanery. We will also each take 2 other people to lunch and ask them these questions.

The open meetings in the deaneries will last about 1½ hour. There will be a uniform format printed up for all to use in the facilitation of these meetings. We will prepare to have 5 facilitators for each meeting for breakout groups. The format will be
1. Welcome by …
2. Presentation about the purpose of these meetings, why we want this information and what we will do with it.
3. Talk about the overall process of the meeting.
4. We’ll count off 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to break up into small work groups.
5. Each group will have an assigned facilitator and will enlist a note taker/reporter.
6. They will answer/discuss the 3 questions. All talk of money will be redirected.
7. Rejoin large group.
8. Each group reports answers to the questions and puts it on butcher-block paper if it hasn’t already been done in the small groups.
9. Debrief: This is what we saw today. What did you see?
10. Summarize
11. Tell people what to look for next – in Risen, on blog (encourage use of the blog for further reflections), pre-convention meetings where resulting resolutions will be discussed.
Jennifer will send out a letter to the clergy outlining how we’d like to see them participate. Ricky will add flesh to the above presentation format.

We reviewed our timeline and determined that the listening process deadline will be extended to the end of May.

Jennifer reported that her letter asking for Diocesan Council to review current mission priorities and produce a report was indeed sent to Bishop Wolf and Scott Gunn+. She reported that according to Scott, the Diocesan Council will organize four people to convene four groups: ECC, Spanish Ministry, Congregational Development, and Christian Formation. Their reports will be completed by the end of May.

We made a plan to schedule a meeting with Program and Budget for a Saturday in April. Scott Nicholson will arrange this.

Jennifer+ will contact David Lucey.

Next meeting is 4/8/10 at 7 pm at St. Paul’s, Pawtucket.

The meeting closed with prayer at 9:00 pm.

Respectfully submitted,Susan Wright