On Wednesday, April 16, a group of people from St. Mark’s gathered at St. Paul’s-Maumee with many others from the Toledo and West Deaneries to meet with Bishop Mark and his staff members.  The main topic of discussion was the diocesan mission strategy resolutions that were approved by Diocesan Council.  (You may remember that a couple of years ago, the Diocesan Mission Strategy Task Force was charged with developing a 25-year vision for the Diocese of Ohio.  The findings and recommendations of the Task Force has been discussed at previous meetings and in Church Life.  The full report of the Task Force can be found on the diocesan web site: http://www.dohio.org. Click on Resources > Downloads > Article/Report/Guide.)

Two broad themes that came out of this process were the need to be creative and the need for collaboration; you’ll see both in these resolutions.  Here is a much abbreviated overview of the approved mission strategy resolutions (the full text of these resolutions can be found on the diocesan web page).  In the square brackets is one of three categories into which the resolutions fell.

1a.  Christian formation programs for children, youth, and adults  [congregational vitality]
1b.  Natural Church Development  [congregational vitality]
2.  Other models for priestly formation  [congregational vitality]
3.  Model for facilitating discussions about congregational reorganization and church closings  [congregational vitality]
4. Review of deaneries; new model for collaborative mission and ministry  [parish collaboration]
5. Three-year covenantal relationships between parishes  [parish collaboration]
6a.  Greater geographic diversity in diocesan committees and commissions   [parish collaboration]
6b.  Using technology to allow people to participate in these committees and commissions  [parish collaboration]
7. Diocesan Advocacy Committee  [diocesan collaboration]
8. Covenantal relationships between the Diocese of Ohio and at least two other diocese in other parts of the world  [diocesan collaboration]
9. Increasing diocesan budget for domestic and international mission work  [diocesan collaboration]
10a.  Evangelism Working Group (to help people reflect on and share their faith experience with others who are seeking God)  [congregational vitality]
10b.  Starting new congregations, using new models of ministry   [diocesan collaboration]

We divided into small groups to talk about how we saw these resolutions benefiting the diocese, benefiting our parish, and what the parish might need to do.  Gatherings in the three other regions of the diocese will be having similar conversations;  a summary of the comments will be shared.

It was great to hear about how the Diocesan Mission Strategy is progressing.  This is a really exciting time in the Diocese of Ohio.  This is an exciting time to BE the Diocese of Ohio (which we all are).

~  ~  ~

PS—It was great to hear others talk about how excited they were to hear about Natural Church Development and to know that we at St. Mark’s are already at work with NCD.

Welcome to the blog of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Toledo, Ohio!  If you attend St. Mark’s and would like to post reflections and/or announcements to the blog, email Jolene Miller at jolene278@gmail.com to be added!  (If you want, you can post with a pseudonym and a secondary email address, rather than your real name and primary email address.  Interested, but not sure how this all works?  Jolene can help with that also!