Mission Discernment Team

Dear PBUUC Members and Friends,

Today, I am writing to share with you the next step of the mission discernment process.

Many of us gathered in small groups for five weeks to reflect on the following:

Week One: What has the experience of being in this church over the last 6-12 months been like for you?

Week Two: Please share 1-3 specific instances of people here relating to each other (words and/or actions) that you directly experienced or witnessed that either: (a) Made you proud to be part of this congregation; or   (b) Distressed, troubled or negatively impacted you.  For each please share (a) the impact on you and (b) what this says to you about the culture of this church.

Week Three: Please share 1-3 specific instances of people here relating to each other (words and/or actions) that you directly experienced or witnessed that either: (a) Made you proud to be part of this congregation; or (b) Distressed, troubled or negatively impacted you. For each please share (a) the impact on you and (b) what this says to you about the culture of this church.

Week Four: Please give 1-3 examples that illustrate how we want to be with each other. For each, please share: (a) what happens and (b) what this example would say about this community. Also (optionally) any barriers that you note to this event happening in this way.

Week Five: How do we develop, encourage, and maintain this way of being together? (in other words how do we act on this aspect of our mission). What are the barriers? What are our strengths? What specific actions can we take that support this kind of individual and collective practice?

Share one example of what personal accountability, boundary setting or relationship repair would ideally look like in this church 5b. Share one concrete suggestion for something we can do as a congregation that would help us get to a place where that response is more likely.

Members and friends have reported that the conversations were rich and meaningful. During each session, the facilitators took notes. We are sharing with you in a document that the mission discernment team has compiled.

The notes were edited and randomized to maintain the anonymity of the group members. Otherwise this document has not been edited. These comments represent individual perspectives and may include factual errors, but we felt it was important to share the responses as we received them.

The document is lengthy; we are currently working to create a more manageable summary of the responses, as well as to extract recurring themes, and we will share those as soon as we have them.

To access the document, please send an email to missionteam@pbuuc.org We will send a link to the notes. We are using this process to limit access by those who are not members and friends of Paint Branch.

We hope this information will spur other deep conversations.  The mission team is considering next steps, which could include other small group opportunities, further mission discernment work, formal covenanting work, or specific actions or programming based on the recurring themes in these responses.  We will share more, and seek congregational input, after all these responses have been processed.

Thank you to all who participated!!

All the best,
Your Mission Discernment Team
Leo, Tricia, Mary and Rev. Ann

See you in church!