I recently attended a Shaping Our Future Conversation Circle on the topic of Growth. There were three of them in progress when I found one with an opening. While the conversation was lively, what struck me was that, given the time limitation of 30 minutes, we weren’t able to get delve into the topic to deeply. With a group of six people, each one had, in essence, five minutes of discussion. This did not allow for a lot of give and take, especially since a topic like this could easily have taken the rest of the afternoon.
My understanding of this process (and someone please correct this if I am wrong) is that the comments will be compiled to get a sense of what the congregation thinks about each of the topics discussed, and somehow come up with a church vision for the future from all of these discussions. I personally felt some real limitations since there were only six other people whose ideas and thoughts I could hear, and I found myself wondering what else the other two groups were coming up with. Others who couldn’t or didn’t attend a Conversation Circle could post comments on this blog, though this option doesn’t seem to be getting much use.
What would be most useful for me, and I suspect others in the congregation, is to hold a couple of large half-day town meetings or workshops, were lots of ideas and interaction can take place. It seems to me that if there is a vision for the future that comes out of this process, this would be the best way to get congregational buy-in for it.
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As amember of the future shapers group I want to say I think the process we are currently using has great potential. It is also getting the word out to the congregation that their vioce matters. Not everyone wants to do or has the time to attend a full or part day event. When we were deciding on a format that would work the best discussed many options and decided that the conversation circles would be the most inclusive and get ideas off the top of peoples heads. We are wanting to find out what works for memver and visitors to our church. The idea is to get information and see what commonalities come across. We are seeking to get input from as many folks as possible without burdening there already busy schedules. Not everyone is dedicated enough to come to long gatherings, but many people do have ideas and opinions we want to hear from as many as possible. We are not wanting to solve the problems of the world with the circles we are not looking for answers here we are looking to gather information about what the collective vision for the future is.
ReplyDeleteThere are going to be a couple of evening conversation circles as well and they will be short and sweet over dinner and hopefully will entice others to participate.