A Report on the Open Space Workshops

By the Numbers

RSVPs – 158 (108 Wednesday, 50 Saturday)

Attendees – 135 (92 Wednesday, 43 Saturday) 

Attendees by worship service: 

• 7:45 – 24
• 9:00 – 59
• 11:00 - 52

And it wasn’t just people who have been here forever. Almost 20% of the attendees have been at St. Helena’s less than 3 years. 

About 800 individual comments were received, filling almost 135 pages of a flip chart. Around 500 dots were placed to indicate importance of our core values. The dot breakdown looks like:

• Formation - 167
• Liturgical Worship - 138
• Outreach - 122
• Serving - 114
• Fellowship - 103
• Episcopal Identity - 90
• Intergenerational Community - 69

Something our team found interesting is there were actually more comments made at the Saturday workshop, which had half as many people as the Wednesday workshop.

We had 18 guest facilitators representing 6 different ministries and churches.

Chair Lori Houck with guest facilitators: the Rev. Tim Swan, Grace Church, San Antonio; Canon Caroline Mowen, DWTX

Co-chair Laura Folse with guest facilitators: Christina Sweet, St. Margaret's, San Antonio; Lisa DeHart, Grace Church; Marcy Roca, St. Margaret's

What We Heard

We heard a lot of things: some beautiful, some difficult, and some contradictory. From the totality, some themes emerged. We are passionate about worship. We present a strong desire for continued formation and expanded outreach. We want to love our neighbor. We heard some frustration around communication. And we heard deep joy and thanksgiving for what God is doing in and through St. Helena’s.

One of our newer participants told us he was impressed that St. Helena’s is a community open to holding this sort of workshop. We also heard from our high school youth, who didn’t just show up, but actively participated. We heard them saying they want to be included in more of the wider life of the church, not just “youth” things.

We heard widely differing opinions:

• “more kneeling” and “no kneeling ever”;
• “please add hymns to 7:45 worship” and “I go to 7:45 because there’s no music”’
• “we need more outreach” and “we need less outreach focused on bigger things”

What It Means

Obviously, we cannot please all our people all the time. Our worship is not bespoke. We cannot tailor our liturgical practices to suit each individual desire. Yet holding three distinctly different worship services allows us to serve a wider breadth of people. We very much represent the via media, the middle way, nature of the Episcopal Church. This is important to us. We are less homogenous than we like to imagine. We are people who agree about some things and disagree about some things and still choose to come together at the altar. This is a great and beautiful thing!

We work hard to communicate effectively. We can and will continue to improve upon our communications. However, communication is a two-way street. We can do better at sharing information. But we also need to improve at receiving information. We are a larger church now. Gone are the days when just a few things were happening and everyone went to all of them. We now have many things going on all the time and expect only some of our people to participate in each of them. We will continue to live into this transition for a few more years until it becomes our new normal.

We love to serve. We respond to people in need. We care about our church family and our wider community. But we are not doing a fantastic job at getting out there and getting our hands dirty. We need more opportunities to serve beyond our walls.

We want to grow in our Faith. Spiritual Formation – the opportunity to grow through through Scripture, study, and prayer – is important to us. But is it important enough? We will continue to offer a wide variety of formation groups on different days and at different times.

What We’re Doing

So, what are we doing in response to what we’ve learned? Leaning into a now, next, later strategy, we intend to respond in 4 main areas: worship, communications, formation, and outreach. These areas don’t include all that we are doing, but they represent the bulk of our response.

Worship

• Add a 4th Sunday morning worship service in April 2027
• Add a 5th Christmas Eve service at 11:00 p.m. with high church liturgy
• Continue to hold Compline during Advent and Lent, and find ways to add more worship opportunities from the Daily Office

Communications

• Add campus map in bulletin
• Communications audit early 2027
• Revamp website spring 2027

Formation

• Continue to expand formation opportunities with more days and times
• Create specific online formation resources

Outreach

• Open Diaper Pantry outreach project in 2027
• Revision how we do outreach at St. Helena’s

One more piece we’ve considered: what wasn’t said. Not much was said about our school or intergenerational connection. It would be easy to presume that’s because they lack importance. However, we don’t believe that is the case. We think our school and intergenerational nature are so ingrained in us, are so much a part of who we are, that we simply didn’t need to talk about them. They are so important as to be unremarkable.

Finally, our team will continue to distill and digest the information gathered at the workshops with the goal of presenting a new mission statement to the congregation at the Annual Meeting in January. We look forward to sharing more with you then.

St. Helena's Episcopal Church and School

508 N. Main Street

P.O. Box 1765

Boerne, TX 78006

Office hours: Monday - Thursday 8am-4pm

Office phone: 830-249-3228

Church and School Staff:

The Rev. Jay George, Rector

The Rev. Mike Woods, Assistant Rector

The Rev. Deacon Maggie Paul, Curate

Bryce Boddie, Music Minister

Pam Boutte, Parish Administrator

Bethany Covington, Children's Minister

Heather Dumais, Head of School

Mary Anne Havens, Organist

Pat Krueger, Seniors Minister

Cayce Mann, Young Adults Ministry (YAMs)

Dawn McLendon, Parish Life Minister

Amy Ryland, Administrative Assistant to the Rector

Laura Shaver, Director of Communications

Andrew Snyder, Youth Minister

Olivia Wehrung, Chancel Choir Director

Cindy Erickson, Sunday Sexton

Zack Tanner, Sexton

Linda Antu, Custodian