Dear saints,

This weekend the Vestry and the Future of Our Block steering committee will be on retreat together as we continue to make great progress with our discernment work for the future of the church on our city block. We plan to cover a lot of ground. The vestry will hear back from a future church task force, which it commissioned following last year's vestry retreat. The remit of that task force was to take a long-term look at membership, attendance and other trends; model a 30-year projection of our parish finances; study how other churches are identifying pathways to vitality for the years and decades to come; and, make its own recommendations to the vestry for All Saints' future.

The vestry and block steering committee will spend the main part of the retreat reviewing the existing conditions of our buildings and grounds, and then will discuss a series of concepts for the block that the steering committee has been studying this summer as a result of your insights and vision shared earlier this year during our parish engagement work. All of this and the future church recommendations will be shared with the parish next month as part of a series of forums on our future and the block.

Thoughtfulness and care take time. At our annual clergy conference this week, as I have shared something with colleagues across the diocese about our discernment work at All Saints' and listened to how other churches are imagining their futures in our part of the Episcopal Church, it is clear that all deliberate slowness is a common characteristic. As clergy, we deeply value the church communities entrusted to our care. As we look out at the changing landscape those churches will navigate in the years ahead, it is increasingly clear how crucial the next decade and two will be for the long-term health and prosperity of those congregations. 

With all that will be different about the future, All Saints' has a tremendous opportunity to stake a claim to what a vital urban church can look like through the decades of this century. In so many ways, this church can be a beacon of God's hope not only in our lives but in the lives of so many in this city around us. I am excited for us all to hear those visions for vitality as together we give thanks for the gift of this parish community and the good work that God has entrusted us to do here together.