# 4 (of 5) Vision 2012 Goal: Mission Plan Based on Community Need

When our Vision 2012 Team met with a consultant last year we learned that our church did not have a lot of “resiliency”. You might say that the church seemed to have a kind of “flu” bug. The church had experienced division around capital improvements, disappointment at falling short of capital campaign goals and then a rough pastoral transition followed by a worrisome economy. All of these things attacked the immune system of the church, so at the time our Vision Team came together, it seemed to the consultant that our church did not have the strength to even imagine audacious new goals and missions. The focus was on keeping and improving what we already have. When you are sick you don’t want to go outside!

Our Vision Team also exhibited signs of our lack of resiliency. The group named some intriguing ministry ideas such as to begin a Daycare Center, to create a Hudson Bookstore and Café or even to relocate to a storefront out of which Open Door and Agape could operate, leaving worship to take place in member’s homes where better intimacy could be achieved. Intriguing. But when we discussed the importance of really studying the community or reading books to understand the usefulness of these ideas, few among us had the energy. We want to get out of the house, we really do, but we are still under-the-weather.

The Vision 2012 Team isn’t bringing recommendations to the Church Conference that we open a Bookstore or a DayCare center at FUMC Hudson, intriguing as those may sound to some. I think our church is turning a healthy corner and we will soon be able and willing to tackle more audacious ministries for Chirst’s sake, but we can’t move forward on ideas like this without serious engagement with the community and with helpful texts. Still, I am looking for a cadre of dreamers who feel healthy enough to roam the streets of Hudson and Stow and Berlin. Here are examples of what they may be asking:

This summer Dennis and I stopped people on the street at Hudson Fest and asked them to tell us their favorite pizza place and their favorite song right now. Nobody told us that hymns were their favorite songs. Adults in this town like country music and rock music from the eighties and early nineties. Kids like thrash metal, hip hop and country, for the most part. How can we use what we know to meet people where they are?

Later in the summer I set-up a lemonade booth outside the church and asked parents with small children to fill-out a quick survey. The survey asked what opportunity at 34 Felton Street they were most likely to take advantage of. The list contained about fifteen possibilities including some typical offerings like worship and book studies. The three most popular items: 1. A play space for their kids. 2. Gourmet cooking classes. 3. Weeklong-camp during school holidays. How can we use what we know to meet people where they are?

Before Block Party a handful of us walked the church neighborhood inviting folks to join us at 34 Felton. I met with one longtime neighbor of the church who said he had never been visited by anyone from this church before. He was a happy Roman Catholic and so we invited him to Agape Café rather than to worship. I visited one house with a car out front that sported two bumper stickers—a rainbow flag (suggesting to me that the owner of the car is gay) and “Back Off—I’m a Goddess”. A woman came to the door, took the flier and said “Okay I’ll take this but otherwise I’m all set…” The last house I visited brought me face-to-face with a man who said he had only one friend in Hudson, only one person he felt he could trust. Everybody else had stabbed him in the back. He tells me he goes to work and he goes home, that’s it. I suggest to him that there is a third place for him and at least one more friend. He did seem grateful for our thirty-minute visit. None of these three people ever attended Block Party or Agape Café, but I learned much more about how a Catholic, a “Goddess” and an angry, lonely man see our church and community. How can I use what I know to meet these people where they are?

At Church Conference I am looking for people who are not afraid to talk to people about who they are and what they really need. I’m looking for people who have a sense that God wants to do something audacious through our church in this community, people committed to follow the signs no matter where they lead. Are you ready to go outside yet?