Our Mission Challenge
After a long process of questioning, discussion and prayer, the members of St. Francis reached a defining conclusion about who we are and how we will serve God in a rapidly changing world.
How can we testify to God’s love and presence in a meaningful and relevant way to those who worship and seek the divine in different ways?
First and foremost, we acknowledged that St. Francis is a spiritual community, which simply means that we are a place that is focused on being in relationship with God, each other, the world around us, and ourselves. In other words, as our Book of Common Prayer says: The church’s mission is to “restore all people to unity (relationship) with God and each other in Christ.”
When we speak about being a center of spirituality, we focus on how we nurture and strengthen the bonds that bring people closer to God.
For St. Francis, the challenge was to identify the challenges we face as a church and what our response should be as we reach out into the world.
After prayerful review and discussion, the congregation expressed our mission challenge as follows:
“We are a welcoming, engaged and diverse community of faith
dedicated to the spiritual, physical and social well-being
of ourselves and our neighbors.
Whoever you are, whatever your beliefs,
come explore and experience with us the mystery of God’s love.”
Areas of Ministry
The Vestry’s Role
A Vestry member has been designated as a liaison to each of the seven areas: Administration, Stewardship, Christian Formation, Worship, Pastoral Care, Hospitality and Reaching Out. The Vestry liaisons will work with the various church committees grouped within their designated ministry to discuss how to work together and to find out if there is anything the Vestry can do to support their work. The Vestry liaison will coordinate discussions on how each committee embodies the meaning of our mission challenge. A lot of wonderful things are already happening at St. Francis, but each committee, group or guild is taking a fresh look at what they do and asking if there are things that they could do to move them into living our mission more fully.