Strategic Vision Midterm Report

Read this letter in:

Mandarin

Spanish

Tagalog

Tongan

Listen to a recording of this letter in:

English

Mandarin

Tagalog

Tongan

A big thank you to the amazing people in our diocese who made these translations and recordings possible, the Rev. Merry Chan Ong (Mandrin), the Rev. Pamela Stevens (Spanish), the Rev. Jureck Fernandez (Tagalog), “Ngalu” Ahongalu Fusimalohi (Tongan), the Rev. Kirsten Snow Spalding (English finance memo recording), the Rev. John Kirkley and Jocelyn A. Sideco (English midterm report recording). Their support is greatly appreciated!

May 28, 2025

Dear Siblings in Christ,

During Lent, the Strategic Vision Committee and Bishop Austin met for prayer and reflection on what we learned through the Listening Sessions, research, and interviews conducted over many months. We are grateful for the many thoughtful responses we have received from across our Diocese, communicating both the depth of hope and concern for our common life. We are beginning to develop our strategic vision plan, to be presented at Diocesan Convention in October 2025. In the interim, we want to share some of what we have heard from you, as well as how we are discerning God’s call for us to respond together.

At the core of it all, we hear a common purpose of following Jesus, as a community that embodies God’s justice, love, and mercy for all. This purpose takes us beyond the doors of our churches to partner with our neighbors in service here in the Bay Area.

I. Naming Our Collective Diocesan Values

We heard many stories of challenge and pain that often stemmed from the absence of trust. Throughout this listening process, we noticed patterns that helped us name shared values which lead to the building of trust among us. Sometimes these values were experienced as absent and named in the negative, other times as present and positively claimed as supportive.

This extensive data collection and sorting process has revealed distinct categories of experiences which point to five core values that build trust among us:

Painful Experiences Shared Value
  • Being ignored and neglected;
  • seeing others profiting from favoritism;
  • not mattering to leaders
 Mattering
  • Competition among groups and individuals;
  • poor and absent communication;
  • groups working at cross purposes;
  • lack of responsive support from leaders;
  • lack of coordination between ministries;
  • absence of shared ministries;
  • lack of transparency and accountability
 Collaborating
  • Energy and ideas being sidelined;
  • gifts not being acknowledged or affirmed;
  • disengagement from diocesan events and leadership;
  • disengagement from the world outside our church walls;
  • being discouraged from participating;
  • certain projects or priorities taking up lots of diocesan attention while other areas felt neglected;
 Collectively Empowering
  • Perception of scarcity causing fearful postures and pervading people’s sense of money, time, and energy;
  • seeing the natural limits of resources as signs of not mattering, a need to compete for survival, and/or a need to protectively disengage from contributing to communal resources
 Sufficiency
  • Deep disconnection from a shared love of the Gospel, shared faith in Jesus, and shared values;
  • seeing each other suspiciously;
  • cliques; status consciousness;
  • all forms of oppression
 Belonging

The beautiful news is that we also have seen many places where these values are already alive and shaping ministry in our Diocese.

Between July and October, all are invited to join a diocesan-wide conversation, Building Trust as a Diocesan Community: Nourishing 5 Values to Follow Jesus Together. These gatherings feature videos that highlight each of these values and the ways that their expression here in our Diocese’s ministries result in building trust.

II. Discerning Action Steps Toward Living Our Values

As we shift toward a fuller articulation of this strategic vision for our diocese in October, we remain in active discernment about where God is calling us to respond in this moment. A number of broad areas of focus for action have arisen as recurring themes, while others are still emerging.

All of them involve shared, mutual work by everyone in our diocesan body. Only some of them are named here and are not named in any linear order. Each action is required for the building of trust across our diocesan relationships via the values your experiences revealed, both in what we do and in how we do our work together.

Shared Value Focus Area for Action
Mattering Facilitating reconciliation and healing in relationships where trust has been broken;
Collaborating Identifying and prioritizing the expressed needs of congregations in order to align our programs and diocesan staff’s attention to support congregational growth and health;
Collectively Empowering

Nurturing Christian formation and leadership with particular attention to the spiritual practice of discernment; some key, but not exhaustive, examples include:

    • Children, Youth, and Young Adult ministry
    • Leadership formation for laity and clergy, for leaders of councils and commissions, and for diocesan staff
    • Vocational discernment for laity and clergy

Practicing the Love of Jesus beyond our church doors with innovation that highlights the vital guidance of our Deacons and builds collaboration across our Diocese;
Sufficiency

Trusting there are sufficient resources to do together what God is calling our Diocese to do;

Improving participation, transparency, and accountability in the diocesan budget process to ensure that the budget and its implementation align with our Vision, Purpose, and Values and collectively engages with lower revenues and increased ministries—additional details here;

Evaluating the distinctions between Missions and Parishes and responding to how those distinctions are, and are not, helpful;
Belonging Bringing particular attention to ministry with our siblings whose heartlanguages are Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, and Tongan.

Attention to trust-building through these values and our focus areas for action will guide the Strategic Vision Committee as we write the Strategic Vision. It will be a three-year plan, informed by a central vision and purpose, which focuses on following Jesus here in the Bay Area. Specific strategies to address these broad areas of concern across our diocesan structures will each be tied to a responsible individual or group. (E.g. congregational development, attending more to our diaconal ministries, intergenerational ministry and growth, governance, etc.)

We imagine this Strategic Vision will serve as a map for the next interconnected set of steps that will move us toward following Jesus more faithfully and joyfully as a Diocese. We aim for it to promote a healthy ecosystem for future growth as the Body of Christ in the Bay Area. We trust that the Holy Spirit will also help us iterate over time, as we stay attuned to God’s calling. Please continue to pray for us to be guided by God as we move into the final phases of our work.

With gratitude,

Adam, Amy, Austin, Debie, Evan, Felicia, Jacob, Jocelyn, John, Laura, Liz, Miguel, Todd, Tricia, Will
Members of the Strategic Vision Committee, subcommittee of Executive Council