A Strategic Plan 2022-2025 - Fulfilled in Faith, Hope, and Love
In the fall of 2021, the Vestry of St. Matthew’s began to draw together a strategic plan to guide the parish’s emergence from the COVID pandemic. Because every aspect of parish life had been upended or completely suspended by the pandemic, it’s not a surprise that the three strategic priorities of this plan focused on the most basic aspects of parish life. The Vestry and the Clergy said then that they would lead the parish by initiating and tracking efforts over these three priorities:
We wanted to grow in our Christian Faith by engaging our parish history.
We wanted to grow in our Christian Hope by engaging our local community
We wanted to grow in Christian Love by leading engagement in a re-emerging parish life.
The first priority is the most distinct, and was driven by our approaching parish bicentennial and a desire to tell our history more fully. This desire emerged out of the discussion of renaming the Ruffin House to the Parish House in 2020. The basic idea was that the deepening of our faith in Christ would happen through a rich engagement with our the history, the good and the bad — wondering how the God of Jesus Christ could use this history to open us more to God’s working now. Further, the first two priorities were closely related — the sense was that engaging our history would naturally open our hearts and lead to more engagement with other parishes and groups in the community.
This plan was originally slated to run from 2022-2025, and I am happy to report on the fruit it has born.
History and Faith: In many and varied programs, lectures, and pilgrimages we have engaged our history. Some of this history is very challenging, and yet discovering how Jesus identifies himself with the suffering and marginalized — the identity of ‘the cross and the lynching tree’ — has powered a deepening of faith for many. We have a better understanding of how God uses what has gone wrong in our lives, our past sin, precisely to ground future mission, a theological idea picked up from The Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams.
Community and Hope: Flowing out from this deep formation has been a boisterous, joyous, committed engagement with our community, notably through Orange County Justice United, in which St. Matthew’s is one of the strongest members. It’s also happened in the development of Heaven Practice worship and fellowship. Christian Hope emerges when we taste something of heaven now, and understand in our experience how God makes it come about, and commit more and more to making it happen even in the present age.
Parish and Love: Finally, over the past three years, parish life at St. Matthews has blossomed and grown, allowing many new means of engagement, which people are avidly taking up. Worship attendance is up 30% in two years. Pledging is up the same amount over the past six years. We have a new flourishing of groups and activities — witness the women’s retreat which 28 women attended! Parish events are normally filled to overflowing.
The Vestry is currently in discernment about new priorities for the next three years, 2026-2029, a process that will intertwine with the creation of a parish profile and the call of the new rector of St. Matthew’s. It seemed important to the Vestry and to me, however, to take a moment, to share and celebrate the fulfillment of our strategic priorities from 2022. St. Matthew’s is ready for the next stage in its life.
The Rev. Robert Fruehwirth, Rector