Building Committee

Building Committee Input to July 2007 Monthly Newsletter

Building for Our Ministries

As I described to you in last month’s issue of “The View”, one of the first things that the Building Committee wants to do is ascertain the ministries that St Chad’s wishes to put particular emphasis upon – because we should design and acquire facilities that are aimed at enhancing our ability to perform those ministries well and effectively.  In short, we are taking a demand-driven approach to the Building Program.

While all ministries seek to do God’s work and have merit, each congregation emphasizes or focuses on its own set of ministries, and its own style for doing them.  Moreover, those emphases may change over time as the congregation or situation changes.  In that regard, we believe it is important to ensure that all voices are heard, including those of our new members, in the examination of St Chad’s ministries.  To do that, we will hold 2 “town hall” meetings at which we will ask for everyone’s inputs on our ministries.  At those meetings, BC members will lead you in a short discussion, then guide you through a survey designed to allow you to record which ministries you believe should receive special emphasis at St Chad’s – now and for years to come.

To avoid duplicating the focus groups of both the Building Feasibility Committee of last fall and the Rector Search Committee of a couple years ago, we started by extracting the ministries identified during those processes, and then adding some that seemed most likely to influence the facility requirements or design criteria for the planned expansion; we aim to have a fairly comprehensive, yet not too lengthy, list of possible ministries.

After your responses are analyzed, the Building Committee will ask the Vestry to approve the ministries you think should receive special emphasis as the primary input in the determination of requirements for our facility expansion.  In a few months, we will ask you to review and approve those preliminary facility or design requirements, as well.

One “town hall” meeting will be held at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, July 10, and the second will follow the 9:45 worship service on Sunday, July 15.  We hope that you will make it a point to attend one of these sessions so that your views are included in this important, first step in planning and designing expanded facilities for St Chad’s ministries.

Finally, you may already have seen the BC poster in the hallway – among other information, it contains copies of the minutes of our meetings which you are welcome to take.  Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Faithfully,

Bob Gough, Chair