Message from Pastor Stanton for Nov, 2025
Well, now I’m excited!
A year or so ago, our Vision & Leadership Team asked whether now (then) might be the time to enter a Strategic Planning Process. We all looked at each other, knowing the work that goes into such an effort and decided: no. We just didn’t have the capacity to do that work well. And more time passed.
By the spring of 2025, we returned to this question of whether now might be the time to look into firms that facilitate strategic plans. Although I’m not sure anyone feels like they have “more capacity” this year than last, it just felt more like the right time. Our answer was ‘yes.’
Brian Narveson, one of our Stewardship Team chairs, and Jason Witt, our Vision & Leadership Team president, and I interviewed three individuals from reputable firms and had some fascinating conversations with people who make it their life’s work to listen: to God, to God’s church and to the leaders who communicate with God’s people. In the end, we all three agreed that the answer was clear: Tim Johnson from Kairos (KIGH-ross) was the leader we needed. He brings 17 years experience in this work, with pastoral experience before that. He also promised to not only tell me and the rest of a team how to do all the things. He promised to lead meetings, facilitate conversations and write drafts himself. In a church where all of us are too busy to add another thing, I liked that a lot.
In October, I invited seven members to join me in the work of a Strategic Planning Steering Team. All seven said yes! That NEVER happens for a pastor;) On October 15, we had our first meeting. It took place in the midst of 35 confirmands and their guides leaving for an event in Sparta, not long after our narthex was full of OWLs who met for their annual Halloween party. I had spent much of the day sorting through seventy-one applications for our office administrator position that will be left vacant after the retirement of our beloved Tamara (thank God for Tamara all these years) and wasn’t sure I was ‘up’ for a two-hour Strategic Planning meeting. It had been a long day for a lot of reasons. And then we met.
Tim led a simple devotion based on a couple biblical texts about listening: Samuel hearing God calling him, finally responding, “Here I am Lord”. And Jesus saying “My sheep hear my voice.” We prayed that the eight of us would hear God… and that sounds very churchy and abstract—but it happened!
About halfway through the meeting, one of us wondered how this Strategic Plan process fits within the work our congregation already does. Our Vision & Leadership Team are called to listen. Our Stewardship Team takes time every year listening at cottage meetings. None of this seems to be ‘new’ work, so why are we doing Strategic Planning? A comment here; some silence there; a metaphor, a quote, and an experience or two was shared and voila! It became clear to us that Strategic Planning is not something ‘new’ we are doing. The work our Strategic Planning Steering Team is doing will simply make the most of five years of discernment work that began the week after we all returned to in-person worship in March of 2021. The world changed during the pandemic. So did First Lutheran. We’ve all been forging a new normal since then. Our Strategic Planning process will bring the breadth of our efforts and goals and desires into focus. It is time to distill our vision.
In order to do that, we need EVERYONE to contribute their experience, perspective and imaginations to this process. To start? Please complete a MAP.
We are in the final and most crucial phase of discerning who we want to be, and what gifts we have to give for many years to come. The work of those who came before us helped us get through the crisis that was Covid. Our work has the potential to serve those who come after us for years and even decades through times we cannot see from here. Please join us in this good work by simply completing the MAP. Thank you for your partnership in the gospel.