Annual Vision of Ministry. Your board members spent time at the board retreat in August selecting the priorities from our Strategic Plan that we felt were most important for our church in the coming year.  We conducted a lively exercise to select the top priorities for focus and attention by our church and its many teams, including the Executive Team.  We call these priorities the Annual Vision of Ministry, and last year adopted policy language requiring the board to select a short list of priorities annually to be made into goals, objectives, and accomplished by the ministry team, which consists of the Executive Team, staff, and volunteers.

This year we chose two priorities, directly from our strategic plan: 

• providing exciting, inspirational, and dynamic worship and religious education experiences, and
• transitioning to a “shared ministry” model by promoting a culture of volunteerism and community participation within the church. 

After much discussion, these are plan goals that we believe to be most important to our church at this time.  Of course, there are a great deal of other strategies from the Strategic Plan that will be implemented, but these two have been selected as our most important priorities because they are well-aligned with our Mission, and because they undergird a sense of vitality and vibrancy that our church needs to carry forth the rest of our Strategic Plan and other goals in the church.

While we will continue to work on our Annual Vision of Ministry, some work is already begun.  There are plans to invigorate a worship associate’s team, and we have already seen Rev. Roberta’s capability to be exciting, inspirational and dynamic in worship.  And we are working toward more coordinated volunteerism within the church, as well as learning to more fully appreciate our many, many volunteers.  We will be calling on church leaders and lay members to help ensure our Annual Vision becomes a reality over the course of year.  Let us know what you think of our priorities, and how you might help bring them to fruition.  E-mail me at ostinw@firstuuwilm.org or call (406)-490-1664.
Faithfully yours,
Ostin Warren