Vision 2010

In September of 2004 a group of interested people met to explore what kind of long range planning and visioning the church needed at that time. Out of that first exploratory meeting came a commitment from 14 people to be on the Visioning Task Force. This group met frequently and regularly over the course of the next year. Their focus was to discern God’s vision for SCUCC for the next five years.

After we had met for several months we held a series of dream circles in people’s homes. Each circle created a dreamcatcher with their ideas and visions for the church on it. In this way we got input from a broad spectrum of concerned people in the congregation. The children and youth were an important part of this process of discernment.

In June we held an open forum to consolidate what we had learned and heard. The result was that in September 2005 we completed a final document that described the actions that the congregation had embraced.

WHAT WE ENVISION FOR OUR CHURCH IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

• Continue existing direction and ministries of the church
• 400 – 500 members and two full time ministers
• Need 30 - 40 more parking spaces
• Need to make about 35 more seats in the sanctuary
• Take back the Smallsreed Building and fully use it for our own programs
• Upgrade or modify our main building and our grounds to reflect our core values
• Conduct a Capital Funds campaign to support needed changes

At a specially called congregational meeting on 9/25/05 – just one year after we had begun - the congregation voted to support this vision for our future.

We subsequently gave notice to the First Impressions Preschool and formulated our 2006 budget to reflect the loss of rental income for half of the year. The congregation fully subscribed this budget.

The Vision 2010 Team, having completed their work, blended into the Emerging Ministries Committee, which is an ongoing part of the church infrastructure. In May of 2006 we had a commissioning ceremony for the members of the team.

In October 2006 the preschool finally vacated the Smallsreed Building and cleanup efforts began. We are now in the “spit and polish” phase of making the building usable until major renovation can be funded.