Conversation Circle Process & Intent

At the risk of repeating some things that many of you already know, it seems like this blog needs further explanation or clarification about the direction and format of the current Conversation Circle process.

Cedars’ 50th anniversary year has reinforced a growing sense of arrival in its development as a religious community, and this has suggested congregational engagement in a new assessment of present circumstances and future possibilities. Such a process, suggested by the “Celebrate Our Past – Shaping Our Future” theme adopted for the anniversary year, began to develop in the spring of this year at Cottage Meetings organized as part of the annual canvass. Those events included facilitated discussions exploring participants’ thoughts and dreams about current and future possibilities for Cedars. Those forward-looking ideas remain with us as displayed in poster panel form in Webster Hall and they are the direct source of the themes now used to guide the Conversation Circle process.

The overall objective of this new effort is to identify and clarify congregational goals (an initial half-year objective) and implementation strategies for the guidance of Cedars’ further development (the following half-year objective) in a widely-participatory process extending over the full course of the church year. These future-shaping concepts will be keys to a significant future, and the level of congregational participation in the process will directly affect its success. High levels of participation should result in broadly-supported goals and well-conceived strategies for achieving a future that we seek together.

The Conversation Circle process itself is consequently meant to be as widely inclusive as possible, with its primary venue being an easily accessible, relatively brief, and frequently occuring conversation opportunity within, or part of, the coffee hour that follows all of our Sunday morning services. In place and time, this is intended to expand the opportunities for participation and the open format will also allow selective participation in personally meaningful portions of the larger process when conflicting responsibilities or activities make that necessary.

This blog and the Cedars website invitation to participate in direct email communication are meant to serve as further means of participation, and planning is underway to provide additional venues that might better serve segments of the congregation, such as the parents of small children, who find difficulty with the Sunday morning venues.

Planning is also underway for open sharing of the discussion contents and added comments, and for the eventual sifting, sorting, and processing of the congregation’s overall effort. This latter effort will conclude each half of this church year and is intended to produce a report for presentation and further discussion at the mid-year and annual congregational meetings.