Massachusetts Conference Edition
Return
to main page
Read
National Edition
Read the UC News Spotlight E-Newsletter
Return
to main page
Read
National Edition
Read the UC News Spotlight E-Newsletter
Board notes reported by Rev. Dr. Stephen Austin
April/May 2007
We are excited to relay our first of several updates on the Conference-wide Listening Process. The Listening Process Steering Committee met with the Board of Directors and Conference executive staff on Feb. 2, and presented the following report.
The listening sessions on January 6 & 20 were well-attended and quite successful. A total of 33 gatherings were attended by over 450 people, representing 183 churches across the state. Over 2000 pages of information were collected, and have been read through by the Steering Committee once – a first of several “siftings” of all the information solicited which will take place, as it was unanimously agreed that a multi-staged approach to gleaning and analyzing the information was vital to maintain the integrity of the process and to assure that the interpretation of the data is comprehensive.
The Committee will continue to read and analyze the input from these sessions over the next month, while continuing to receive feedback from online data collection. Before finalizing statements and reports on the actual content of the information, however, several things must take place:
(1) Collection of online data must be completed.
(2) More study of the input must be made, and identification of common threads and themes distinguished.
(3) Consensus must be drawn by the Steering Committee as to the conclusions and points of priority that were expressed. These will then be compiled and presented to the Board at its mid-March meeting, when it will continue its work on creating an initial plan of action.
The Board of Directors will present the final compilation of findings at the Annual Meeting in June, along with its initial proposal for moving forward.
On behalf of the Board, Conference staff and the Steering Committee, we are most grateful to all those who participated in the Listening Sessions in January. Your input was valuable, insightful, and vital to our moving successfully into the future as a Conference in the United Church of Christ. Thank you so much!