Our Needs
2017 Strategic Planning Process
Over ten months, 200+ people discovered together that we need a vision to live out our ministry and mission. We identified the five strategic focus areas and goals and other important objectives:
What is important for First Congregational Church moving forward:
- Placing a strong emphasis on children and youth.
- Creating an environment that attracts and retains younger families.
- Offering opportunities for those outside our walls to gather and develop relationships in a Christian environment.
- Developing more of a missional focus.
How we can begin to accomplish these objectives by:
- Evaluating our current ministries and listening to their needs.
- Evaluating our current facility and determining how to create more functional and attractive spaces.
- Balancing our immediate short-term capital needs with a long-term perspective by developing a Master Plan.
- Creating a church that attracts the community and fulfills ministries on multiple levels.
Our Facility Does Not Support Our Vision
Our current facility does not allow us to accomplish our vision – both in how we can use our space and the actual amount of space that we have. Our current building:
- Does not have a logical or efficient flow.
- Does not have needed space for growth as demonstrated currently in contemporary worship and in many ministries – especially as we look outward into our community.
- Lacks a unified appealing aesthetic, with many dated-looking areas and surfaces.
- Doesn’t allow us to be the welcoming community that puts kids first.
- Most importantly, our current facility only allows us to maintain, rather than move towards being the missional church that we want to be.
So, we need to take our identified focus areas, goals, areas of importance, and vision and leverage them as the driving force as faith leads us into the future.
