How do congregations adapt and flourish in trying times? How do we unlock our capacity to build beloved community? How do we discern God’s preferred and promised future?
In 2022 Christ Church was invited to participate in a three-year Diocese of California initiative, Vital+Thriving Congregations. We joined a pilot cohort of about a dozen churches that are undertaking this three-part process of Discernment, Experimentation and Funded Initiatives. The hope is to unlock the potential of congregations to live more fully into the aforementioned questions.
To begin, a Steering Team of six parishioners and the Rector came together to lead several initiatives:
Rev. Claire introduced to the parish Dwelling in the Word, a practice of reading and hearing God speak through the scripture to each other. We’ve been Dwelling in the Word in small groups and in place of sermons during several Sunday services.
A Listening Team conducted confidential, in-depth interviews with 24 people connected with the parish and our wider community.
A Timeline Event was held where we gathered to share our memories and hopes for the parish. The physical timeline that we created was displayed in the parish hall for several weeks, for members of the church and Ventana School to read and add additional notes.
A parish wide survey was conducted.
Several Corporate Spiritual Discernment conversations were held, focused on the question “What is God’s promised and preferred future for Christ Church, Los Altos?”
Concurrently, the Vital+Thriving consultants studied demographics of our region.
Three reports summarizing learnings from the Listening Team interviews, Timeline Event, Corporate Spiritual Discernment conversations, and the operational/functional data we submitted was developed by a third-party partner and provided to the Steering Team.
In 2023 we began our second year in the diocese’s Vital+Thriving program. In the spring, the Vital+Thriving Steering Team and Vestry met to distill the insights from the congregational self-discovery exercises we completed in 2022 and to discern where we believe God is calling us to make a difference in our community. We coalesced around this statement as our Missional Challenge:
God has opened our eyes to a profound spiritual longing in Silicon Valley: many people are disconnected and exhausted, living without family support and struggling to find meaningful relationships. As an open-minded, intellectually curious community, how can we join our neighbors seeking authentic connection, asking real questions, exploring together what practices deepen their flourishing and that of their families?
We called a Missional Innovation Team (MIT) to further define this challenge by developing several experimental activities for our parish and evaluating the results of those activities. Meanwhile, as a congregation, we continued the practice of Dwelling in the Word and began looking for “People of Peace” in the wider community.
In the fall, the MIT proposed four experimental activities:
Interfaith collaboration, building on the Building Bridges Program and partnerships developed over the last two years;
Wednesday community dinners, open to all, and particularly inclusive of young families;
sacred hiking; and
gatherings and support for people who have been harmed by religion.
We are looking for partners in these activities, be they fellow parishioners, members of the Ventana community, or members of our wider community. We ask all of you to look into your hearts to see whether the Spirit is moving you to be involved, in large ways or small, in expanding our community by participating in these activities.
To read more about these initiatives, check out this OpEd piece by Rev. Claire published in the Los Altos Town Crier.
Vital+Thriving Podcast: Where the Church Meets the World
A monthly podcast supporting congregations in discernment and experimentation, and encouraging creative collaboration. The podcast is in its third season and our own Rev. Claire is one of the co-hosts!