Strategic Vision Process

The Strategic Vision process is timely and necessary, responding directly to the needs expressed by our diocesan community during the selection of our 9th bishop. Conversations have revealed areas where we need to focus, including building trust among our members, healing past wounds strengthening relationships within our community, and discovering our shared values.

This process provides us with a structured opportunity to address these issues collectively, fostering unity and setting a clear direction for our future. It’s an invitation for us to come together, reflect on our strengths and challenges, and chart a course that aligns with our shared faith and calling. Ultimately, we hope to find joy in this journey, embodying our wish for the peace of Christ to be with one another.

The development and implementation of the vision plan is intended to communicate our shared values and give us an inspired, common direction for concrete aims. Some areas we already know it will encompass are fostering greater trust and collaboration among congregations, between congregational and diocesan leaders, and between the bishop and clergy. In addition, it will include developing leaders and fostering innovation by recognizing the wealth of gifts among the clergy and laity of the diocese and empowering their authority.

The Vital+Thriving program is designed for congregational discernment, planning, and renewal. To date, about 1/3 of our congregations are participating in the program. The Strategic Vision process is similar in spirit and will be informed by the learnings from the Vital +Thriving program. The visioning process is designed for planning and renewal at the structural, diocesan level and augments the discernment happening in local congregations.

Based on feedback collected during the bishop search process, the plan will include in its scope of work the following specific areas:

• Congregational development and diocesan governance structures
• Relationships among congregations
• Addressing diversity, and our history of racial and economic injustice
• Sustainable systems, including financial sustainability
• Other areas of diocesan vitality as they arise in the process

The Strategic Vision Committee (SVC) is a committee of the Executive Council. It is charged with long-term planning for our Diocese in collaboration with our bishop. Bishop Austin has hired an experienced spiritual director and organizational consultant, the Rev. Dr. Nancy Wiens, to support the committee’s work in developing the strategic vision.

Members of the Executive Council, the regional deans, Vital+Thriving staff, and other leaders made recommendations. Three of the 14 SVC members are elected members of Executive Council. The remainder were recruited by the chair of the SVC based on these recommendations. The criteria for selection aim to give everyone in our Diocese a place to be heard and to recognize themselves on the committee. The criteria include a capacity for prayerful discernment and active listening, demonstrated leadership, and broad representation of the demographic and geographic diversity of our diocese—race, gender, age, orientation, deanery. Pictures and brief bios of the members can be found here.

The SVC began meeting in June 2024 and will provide an initial report at the October 2024 Diocesan Convention. The Executive Council has asked for a strategic vision plan to be presented at the October 2025 Diocesan Convention.

Yes! Bishop Austin has scheduled a series of listening sessions parallel to the work of the SVC beginning in September and continuing at the deanery level. In January 2025, the SVC will begin gathering additional information and input from the wider diocesan community. Your experiences, hopes, concerns, and ideas are crucial to our collective discernment. We invite you to join this process with your curiosity, creativity, and continual prayer for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Contact the Rev. John Kirkley, chair of the SVC, at john@stjamessf.org.