Dear saints,

It is my delight to be able to welcome you to this new e-mail update from me about the future of our block. You can expect to get an update each week as we seek to keep the parish informed about where we are with our parish engagement process as we discern together how God calls us forward.

As we draw together to discern the future of our block, from the outset there are a couple of things that are worth naming clearly. 

The first is that nothing has been decided. The steering committee for the future of our block which the vestry commissioned in late 2018 has learned a lot and shared those learnings with the parish at various times over the past several years, but the question of what we should ultimately do with the block remains open and set before us.

This leads to the second thing worth naming, that we want to hear your voice as we seek to answer that question together. Between now and May, we will engage one another as a parish with some exciting and pivotal questions about the future of our patch of land and how God calls us to be the church upon it. 

I invite you to join me this Sunday to begin that process with a forum in Ellis Hall following the 9:00 a.m. service. At the forum, I will lay out the work we have done to get us to this point and also how you can lend your voice and vision in the weeks to come. We need to hear from everyone and we have designed a listening process that provides a variety of ways for you to be heard, from surveys and free-response forms online and on paper, to town halls, home gatherings and plenty of opportunities for you to share your insights one-on-one. 

As the Prayer Book encourages us, 'let us pray with one heart and mind'. This is not to suggest that we will all agree - because we won't. It is to invite us to hold All Saints' in all of our hearts and minds as we embark on this work together. Thanks be to God for the gift we share together in this place.