Our Episcopal Area (the geographic area our Bishop oversees) is starting something really exciting. 61 institutional leaders from across Alaska, Oregon, Washington, & Idaho are meeting over the next 6 months to learn and practice. Our goal is to change our institutional systems that they might more fully reflect God incarnate in our communities. I’m part of this group as the chair of Trustees for the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference. This team controls a lot of land. We have a lot of power, but we employ practices and. policies from the past. Our organizing principals and ways of being are all focused on building large church buildings in new communities. This worked great when the Trinity building was built in the 1950’s. It works less well today when so many churches are struggling to care for large aging buildings. How can the management of our land and buildings reflect the people in our communities? What might it be like to throw out some of the rules so that we could be more agile and better able to right size ministry or create new ways of gathering and being church? This is really important, difficult work and I am so grateful that all of our leadership is learning together so that we might support one another in making strategic, intentional moves to better live out our call from God to love our neighbors.
As part of our training today we watched the video below. How often do we try to do something new or invite a person in who isn’t like us only to want to revert back to what we know? It is human nature! So this cohort will be unpacking these tendencies and reminding one another how to see the beauty in both the black and white of the penguins and the flamboyant feathers of the peacock. I can’t wait to share more of my learnings with you. I’m really hopeful about this work and our life together as a people.
-Eilidh
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