Here & Now Outcomes: Fractals & Networks

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What's Next?

Vision Interpretation

What are the direct lines from the vision interpretation to the Here and Now Work?

The insights from the Here & Now work, formulate the three key strategies we will be using to advance Foothills bold vision. They are three strategies that are multifaceted and do not directly comport themselves into one or even two specific vision statements. However they are unified in drives towards the cultivation of covenantal belonging (see

Deepening Belonging⁠

Covenantal Belonging is a key strategy for the implementation of vision statements 1, 2, 3, 7.

Stories are foundational and transformational

I cannot belong in a community if I am not known. I cannot belong to a community if I do not know the stories of others nor the collective story I am being invited into. I cannot discern my gifts, nor passions, if I am not invited into a deeper relationship with my own story. We each need help finding the place we need to be within a community, and the raw materials for that journey are found in our stories.

This directly relates to Vision statements:

1: Belonging beyond choosing, People Join People

2: We teach our people to recognize and respond to their innate desire for meaning, purpose and connection.

3: Everyone has gifts and passions, Our people are hungry for opportunities to serve in meaningful ways.

7: Foothills ministries meet people in their lives as they are living them today.

We Must Relationally Companion People In Church Life & Leadership

There will always be barriers to the belonging within a community. Barriers of access, of information, of invitation, language and culture. Having a companion, whose role is to companion you through your journey of engagement with the church and into leadership, can be an extremely effective antidote for the natural barriers of any established community. As one moves from being a newcomer to taking on leadership, companionships is essential for personal growth, and wise counsel navigating the challenges, risks and rewards of responsibility.

This directly relates to vision statements:

Vision 1: People Join People, Caring Through Relationships, Children and Youth Relationships,

Vision 2: Invite people onto a clear path, our work is transformation

Vision 3: Serving leads to ownership

Tend To Our Congregation as a Network/Eco-System

Embracing our congregation is a complex adaptive system demands we instill key practices that harness our collective capacity to incarnate our vision, these take the form of the

Fractal Practices⁠

Our system is to complex for control, nor should we want to control it. A system's capacity to self-organize around fulfillment of its purpose is the hallmark of a impactful, sustainable, and creative organization.

For true self-organization to be impactful and not become susceptible to mission drive it needs feedback systems instill coherency, accountability and missionality.

To enable self-organization there are a few prerequisites, the most pressing are: making our social system visible and accessible, exploring the network mindset, and, building up the needed feedback systems.

The perspective is a strategy for our vision interpretation, that touches on the following interpretations:

Vision 1: People Join People, Belonging Beyond Your Choosing

Vision 2: Invite people down clear path, our work is transformation

Vision 3: We don't volunteer at the church, we are the church.

Vision 6: Internal culture mirrors external, act boldly and take risks, ecological stewardship

Vision 7: We are partners in the movement of Unitarian Universalism

What isn't addressed in Here and Now?

Here & Now provides us with a framework for strategy development. We do not know how specifically each of these strategies will manifest, but we have a process for it’s implementation (see

What's Next?⁠

)

Areas outside that need specific focus are, as this work is unfolding:

Newcomers (BaseCamp first strategy)

Caring Ministry

Integrations with Vision statement 4 & 5.

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