Strategic Initiative Update – Please Join us for our Futures Lab following worship on September 22.

Our work as the Strategic Initiative Task Force has often centered in this prayer:

We honor and give our thanks for 150 years of ministry and service. As we turn to look forward into the sun, wind and stars, help us to understand that you God, are not limited by our plans, or even our imagination, and that what will come from us will be Yours when we open ourselves completely to your Spirit. We offer our prayers to You who are able to accomplish far beyond what we might ask or imagine through your power at work among us.

Following worship on September 22 we invite each of you to join us in a Futures Lab from noon until 4pm. We will meet in the Art Gallery with brunch. We will be led by our consultant, the Rev. Cameron Trimble of Convergence. The goal, in part,is to free us from the possible and unperceived shackles of our imagination, perspective and plans, and discovering, in the end, those hopes that are most important to us.

Here is an overview:

What Is A Futures Lab?

While none of us can see the future of institutional religion, we can use our imaginations to pilot a preferred future.

Most planning work takes into account past and present data. Using forecasting and foresight tools, we try to envision the world that is emerging before us. These are best guesses if we are lucky.

A Futures Lab is an exploratory space for imagining different futures by surfacing the assumptions we hold in the present. It’s a process helpful in breaking through blindspots and a poverty of imagination so that together, we architect a preferred future rather than be colonized by one.

This practice is based on a field of study called “Futures Literacy.” Working with Rev. Cameron Trimble, we will take a voyage to the year 2070.

What might be your probable future should you continue on a predictable course?

What is a desirable future?

What is the difference you hope you will be making in the world in 2070?

We are doing this together, we need each other, and we need you. Please save the date and join us.

Bill T. on behalf of the Strategic Initiative Task Force.

Please register here.