Congregational Development Workgroup Report to 2014 Convention

The Congregational Development Workgroup’s report to the 2014 Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth is submitted by Elinor Normand. You may download a PDF of this report here.

The Congregational Development Workgroup as a whole interviewed representatives from St. Alban’s-Arlington, St. Stephen’s-Hurst, and St. Andrew’s-Fort Worth concerning their requests for grants to assist in their efforts to build their churches. Reports containing their recommendations were submitted to Canon Waggoner. St. Alban’s and St. Andrew’s were interviewed again after six months to confirm their adherence to the recommendations.

The Congregational Development Workgroup currently consists of the following subgroups:

• Communication
• Church Plants
• Evangelism
• Hispanic Ministry
• Altar Guild

During this past year the subgroups have accomplished the following:

Communication: revamped the branding on for all electronic and hardcopy media to re-incorporate the diocesan shield along with the Episcopal shield; produced editions of a new printed publication, Common Purpose: Serving God’s Mission; formulated a plan to continue supporting the website and website-related electronic communication following the webmaster’s move to California. Members of this subgroup continue to encourage everyone to use the recommended branding, to obtain diocesan email addresses and to form and use Google workgroups.

Church Plants: met with a representative from the Diocese of Texas concerning potential areas for church plants; worked with the vestry of All Saints-Fort Worth, which recently approved the allocation of funds to start a mission in the metroplex; explored the idea of starting a church in a restaurant in the cultural district; made plans to visit with a professor at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest concerning strategies of starting churches in non-traditional ways similar to “Front Porch,” an Austin-based non-traditional approach to “doing church.”

Evangelism: completed plans for Cursillo #3, originally scheduled to take place in September, but recently rescheduled for January 2015.

Hispanic Ministry: hosted a workshop led by Dr. Luis Bernard, who led a top-level discussion of Hispanic Ministry; held several subsequent organizational meetings and agreed to focus on attracting New Generation Latino/as (NGLs) to join the committee; identified a young couple, Nathaniel and Olivia Aranda to be the conveners. The Arandas are in the process of planning monthly community events. These events are scheduled to begin early in 2015.

Altar Guild: held their annual meeting in February, with Katrina Packard, President of the National Altar Guild Association, as featured speaker; scheduled their 2015 meeting for February 21, 2015 at St. Luke’s in the Meadow.