On Saturday, January 20th Reverend Liz led a group of dedicated parishioners in reflecting on our pasts as members of St. Chad or St. Andrew parishes. As Reverend Liz shared, “In order to grow together and for our parish to succeed we need to know who we are and how we have lived. The purpose on the day is to learn about our parish histories and build on what we have already done.” This was the first of three Town Hall meetings designed to help us move forward together successfully.
Our first task together was to read and respond to The Gospel According to Matthew; specifically the Genealogy of Christ. We discussed the names we recognized and how we remembered them from the bible. Also considered was what we can learn about Christ from this Genealogy and why was this included in the bible. Table groups shared their discussions with the large group. Reverend Liz summarized everyone’s thoughts; History is messy. No one is perfect. It takes all different kinds of people to make up our world.
While enjoying a lunch of pizza our second task was to tell and listen to stories about our respective church experiences. We reflected on what made our parishes unique. A time when our church was at it’s best as well as challenges we shared. Listening and sharing our stories helped us to see a clearer picture of past experiences and how what we value has been formed and displayed over the years.
While carefully reviewing our parish’s various documents and reports Reverend Liz created a timeline of St. Chad’s and St. Andrew’s histories. As we shared our stories from our table discussions to the larger group these important events and pivotal moments were added to the timeline. We came to learn that despite our differences we have a great deal in common such as our faith, resilience, strength, dedication and care for our community. Before leaving we wrote thoughts on gratitude on post it notes and left them on our timeline.
We have had a great year together on our journey to becoming one. Today was about further building bridges and forming our identity! We hope you can join us for the second Town Hall on Saturday, February 3rd. We will be building on the work completed in January. With a better understanding of who we have been we can focus on our current strengths and challenges and plan where we would like to be. The goal is to create purpose, vision and mission statements for St. Andrew’s.