“God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year:  God is working his purpose out, and the time is drawing near; nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.”

- Arthur Campbell Aigner (1841-1919), 1894

          John R.W. Stott, in his book The Living Church, states: “Vision begins with a holy discontent with the way things are.”  I believe that St. George's is experiencing a 'holy discontent'.  We have gone beyond feeling complacent and we are starting to reflect upon what we can do to make things better.  We need to  be careful, because the feeling of discontent and quickly grow into a feeling of discouragement.   As we begin to feel more discouraged, we also begin to loose sight of the good that is happening.  But with a vision, the future begins to grow and we begin to be more creative; subsequently, discouragement and complacency are replaced with hope.

            In the past year St. George's parishioners have had many discussions about who we are and where we are going. Now we have a new visioning team that will be the catalyst to see all our hopes and ideas come to life.   This starts with a punchy vision statement that everyone in our church can feel proud of and all church members will be able  remember and share.  There is something fulfilling about seeing our vision as we enter the church, on our website or on an advertisment.   When our neighbors ask us about St. George's, we can boldly share with them our vision and invite them to a service or an event. For the past three weeks we have reflected upon three vision statements that came out of the Visioning Day that occured at the end of September:

We are a caring family who seeks inspiration and hope through worship and outreach.

Joy, Hope and Faith: family, giving, caring, laughing, and singing

Experience Christ through: Caring family, Hope and faith, Reach out to all, Inspirational worship, Singing and laughing, and Teaching and exploring.

Each concept share different approaches, but as you can see, they all represent the language and heart of the same process.  The new vision, will become our staple (the food we eat over and over again),  every time we make decisions for our future and when we plan activities, we will ask ourselves, “are we connecting with our vision”.  We do not need stop doing what we have done, but we might need to re-look at the reasons why we are doing certain things and remodle the events and activities so that we experience hope, joy and faith, experience Christ or discover inspiration.   On Sunday, October 19^th we will have a second visioning day, where we will be discussing three things: what we should do, what are our dreams and what are our goals. 

When we have a vision to hold on to, our purpose, dreams and goals for the next five years, I believe that we will begin to see fresh inspiration and hope within the community of St. George's.

I have already have experienced fresh creative thought,

The Rev. Emma Vickery,

Rector