Three Videos
The Vision Team produced three videos to illustrate how they have heard God’s vision for our church. View them here!
Video 1 – Generational Divide
Video 2 – Mission and Vision
Video 3 – Objectives and Goals
The Story of Our Vision Team
In August of 2016, Rev. Taylor Mills presented a proposal to the Administrative Board that an ad-hoc Vision Team be formed. The charge of the Vision Team would be to develop a mission statement, vision statement, objectives, and goals for ASUMC and to return to the Administrative Board to present them.
The next February, Administrative Board members discerned the skills, attitudes, and attributes that would be desirable and those that would not be desirable in Vision Team members. Members were then given an index card to take home, pray for wisdom, observe persons surrounding them and document three names of individuals that they feel would be excellent vision team members. They would confidentially submit these names at the next meeting.
At the April meeting, the (now) Church Council gathered the cards with nominations for Vision Team. The secretary tallied the names and those receiving the most nominations were listed before the Council for final consideration. All of them accepted the invitation to be on the Vision Team with Reverend Mills. They are John McLeod, Lisa Kittrell, Leonard Safrit, Rachel Wyman Dawson, Jeremy Ganey, and Sharon Barnes.
The Vision Team took as their guide the book Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations by Gil Rendle and Alice Mann. Their tools included analyses of the church and community like an analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. They then set about gathering relevant data from both inside and outside the congregation. Certain “learnings” emerged:
- Membership, attendance, and participation peaked in 2008 and 2013 in the latter years of longer pastoral tenures.
- Many people born before the mid-1980’s are accustomed to a church like ASUMC. The majority of Beaufort residents (now and for the next decade) were born before the mid-1980’s.
- The vast majority of those born since the mid-1980’s are not looking for a church like ASUMC if they are even looking for a church at all. Few people born since the mid-1980’s are projected to live in or move to Beaufort.
- There is a very vast distance between the kind of church ASUMC is now and the kind of church those born after the mid-1980’s will look for.
- We believe God calls ASUMC to someday birth a new faith community in Beaufort that will be what those born after the mid-1980’s are looking for.
- To be positioned to birth a new church for those born after the mid-1980’s, God calls ASUMC to grow in discipleship and strength in the coming decade.
What Should Be Done?
The next step was to develop a Mission Statement and Vision Statement to guide the church going forward. A mission statement is a statement of identity and purpose. It describes who we are. A vision statement asks what God is calling us to be and do. It describes where we are headed. After a great deal of prayer and reflection together, the Vision Team put forward the following mission and vision statements:
Mission Statement: Making disciples of Jesus Christ by the sea and throughout God’s creation.
Vision Statement: With passion ignited by the Holy Spirit, we will grow in disciple-making through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.
Central to this mission statement is the phrase “making disciples of Jesus Christ.” You may recognize this from Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28:16–20. Go, make disciples. So would we carry out this mission? That’s where the Vision Statement comes in. We will grow in disciple-making. We will grow in our own discipleship and we will reach others to come alongside us in our discipleship of Jesus.
The Vision Team also connects the Mission Statement and Vision Statement with the Holy Trinity. Ignited by the Holy Spirit, we are “making disciples of Jesus Christ” throughout the Father’s creation. Finally, the Vision Statement invokes our membership vows as United Methodists. We are to make disciples through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. These are the essential five ways we “faithfully participate in the ministries of the church.”
How Will We Do This?
In the vision process, the next steps are called Objectives and Goals. Objectives state what the congregation and its leaders must commit themselves to do in following the vision. Goals state how the congregation will accomplish those objectives. Goals are often expressed as programs, events, or strategies to accomplish a stated objective. After the Ann Street Church Council approved the Mission and Vision Statements in October of 2017, the Vision Team began work on the Objectives and Goals.
They remembered that the vast majority of those born since the mid-1980’s are not looking for a church like ours, if they are even looking for a church at all. There is a generational divide over what people want in a church and even whether to be a Christian at all. If we are to make disciples for Jesus Christ, we will need to provide a faith community that will appeal to those who come after us. So the first Objective is to “forge a new faith community.”
To help understand what this new faith community might look like, the Vision Team brought in Rev. Greg Moore, Executive Director of New Faith Communities for our conference. The team learned that some new faith communities are traditional new church plants. Other new faith communities start as small groups or house-churches. Another kind of new faith community is a multi-site campus.
It’s too soon to know what kind of new faith community God will create out of Ann Street Church. We can engage in a discernment process about that when we are ready. In the meantime, we have three goals designed to help us reach this objective. The first is to “define the needs, gifts, and opportunities of the community.” The second goal is to “partner with the North Carolina conference” in exploring what kind of new faith community will be right for us. The third goal is to “eventually support an associate pastor charged with planting the new faith community.”
The second Objective that emerged from the Vision Team can help us grow. It is to “cultivate a church-wide culture of intentional disciple-making.” We will focus our efforts on being faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and on making more disciples for him. The Vision Team brought in Dr. Christine Harman, Director of Spiritual Formation for our Conference, to help explore what it would look like to “cultivate a church-wide culture of intentional disciple-making” at Ann Street.
How will we go about this? The Vision Team outlined three goals: First, we need to teach “clear expectations for church members based on Christian discipleship.” So we will provide ample opportunities for existing members to grow in their faith through intentional Christian discipleship. We will also clarify for new members what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. The second goal is to implement “an effective process for matching people’s spiritual gifts with church ministries.” Lastly, the Vision Team put forward a goal of having “a discipleship-focused small group for everyone.”
As we cultivate this “culture of intentional disciple-making,” God will grant us growth at Ann Street United Methodist Church. This growth will someday make it possible to approach our other objective: to “forge a new faith community to bridge the gap to bring new people to Jesus Christ.”