PNC moderator reports on mission statement from Leadership Retreat

The leadership of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ met May 18 to 20 at Pilgrim Firs for a the annual Leadership Retreat.  About 40 people attended.  

Chris Hanson

Worshipping, playing, meeting and fellowship made for a lively and productive weekend, said moderator Christine Hanson of Peshashtin.

The primary facilitator was Susan Towner-Larsen, a member of the General Ministries team who facilitates communication between conferences and the national UCC.  She helped participants work through PNC mission and vision statements to define a timely mission statement for the coming year. 

“This mission statement, ‘We are justice seekers, called to embody our faith,’ will help us focus as a conference, in our churches, on our committees and in other interactions with each other, on what we feel is important in this time and place,” she said. 

“Mission statements need to be timely, not timeless.  That is why we needed to focus on a more defined statement,” she said.  “What we show as a mission statement on our website is more of a vision statement.  It is a wonderful vision and beautifully describes how we see ourselves,” she said.

The statement is available for review at http://www.pncucc.org/who-we-are/pnc-vision-and-mission.html. 

Hanson said there is no need to invest much work or time in coming up with something new in the vision statement each year. 

“What we really need as a conference are periodic opportunities to sink deeply into that vision statement in order to ensure that the current mission statement is in sync with what is currently most important to us as a church,” she said.

Towner-Larsen also led the group through a “lexio-divina” process, where participants prayed and focused together on creating the new mission statement.

“We worked and discovered many common threads in our prayerful discernment together,” Hanson said. 

“Faith, justice and community consistently came up in almost every group.  As a result, our new mission statement holds each of these main ideas,” she explained.

Hanson observed that the 2012 Leadership Retreat helped to broaden the faith of participants, both as individuals and collectively as the conference. 

“The Pacific Northwest Conference is an awesome group of faithful justice seekers ready to embody our faith and work together wherever God wants us to be,” she affirmed.

For information, call 509-679-7430 or email donandchris@hughes.net.

 

Copyright Pacific Northwest Conference News © September 2012