Diocesan Office

November 15, 2007- Growth is an interesting word. Growth is an interesting word. It's easy to bandy it about and make
it sound like it means you're committed to something. Anyone who's
tried to drive around Newark late in the afternoon knows that "growth"
is a thing with consequences we don't always want. But, no matter how
much we might want to make "stability" the opposite of "growth" the
fact is that it isn't; stagnation is. So we need to grow, and the
Search committee is grappling carefully, prayerfully, and thoughtfully
with what "growth" can and should mean for St. Thomas's. Certainly, we
want to grow spiritually. But all the other kinds of growth we can
think of involve choices of why, what kind, how, how much, for what
purpose, by doing what. At its core, it's a question of how to shape
what the church does according to who we believe are meant to be.
Obviously, we're waiting on a great deal of information to come in
from you, in the form of your filling out the surveys, but also in the
things you say in Focus groups.

Which brings me to last night's Focus Group meeting: 10 parishioners,
4 Transition Committee Members, 5 Search Committee members. It was a
good conversation. Generally, there was some consensus on two matters:
The first is that growth, per se, should be a consequence of our doing
things right rather than the other way around. The second is that the
University Mission is a crucial, core ministry that needs to be much,
much more integrated into the whole parish, and that it needs much
more involvement from parishioners if it is truly to minister to the
population across the street from us.

I'm going to fuss now: 10 parishioners. 10. 9 committee members and 10
parishioners. Where were you? The Search Committee, the Transition
Committee, and the Vestry have, between them, pretty good
representation of the parish population, but "pretty good" isn't
enough. The same three groups are perfectly capable of articulating a
vision for the parish on their own and on the basis of what we get
from the surveys, but the surveys don't/can't communicate much
passion. The Focus Groups are where you are able to come tell us what
you feel passionately about. There are small signs out there these
days that the parish is beginning to wake up from its long we-lost-our-
whole-staff-in-one-fell-swoop exhaustion, but 10 parishioners wasn't
enough. The Search and Transitions committees are working like crazy
to care for the future of the parish. We need you to support us by
taking the opportunities we are setting up to talk to us.