Join with your fellow parishioners after church on Sunday, Feb. 10 in the Vestry to share your thoughts about our future in an exercise known as a “World Cafe.” In preparation for searching for our next settled minister, the Transition Team will lead small-group discussions centered on three questions that will get us thinking about what’s important to us. Parishioners will rotate among small groups in the vestry, spending 30 minutes in each discussion while scribes at each table take notes and report results. The three questions are:
1. What three things would you like to change about First Parish? The group reaches consensus on the top three things named among them and reports that to the scribe.
2. If you picked up a copy of the Boston Globe five years from now and found there was an article featuring First Parish on the front page, what would you want it to highlight? Choose one from each person.
3. Ministers fulfill many roles in a parish, including prophet, poet, pastor, facilitator, CEO, community organizer, coach, denominational spokesperson, scholar, and preacher. These roles, and perhaps others, will be spelled out on a sheet for participants to consider as important – or not – in the next minister. Each circle will be asked to report the three most frequently mentioned roles.
The results, which will be compiled and publicly available, will help the search committee understand our priorities as a community. This will be the beginning of a discussion that will continue throughout our journey toward calling our next settled minister. Please join the conversation.