Greater Engagement:
A Plan for the General Church
2016-2020
The Rt. Rev. Peter M. Buss Jr.
O
ver the past 18 months, a team of people1 has been working to prepare
a four-year plan for the General Church. Along the way, we have invited
extensive feedback from the clergy and Board of Directors of the General
Church. We are grateful for their input, which has significantly influenced the
final version.
The goal of any church planning is to see more people serving and being
served. While we rejoice in the ways that the General Church is helping people
around the world, and express gratitude for the many people who give of
themselves to others by means of the Church’s activities, there is opportunity
to invite more people to take advantage of what the Church has to offer.
This plan seeks to provide for greater engagement by:
• Rallying around the uses of worship, education and outreach
• Communicating better
• Supporting employees more effectively
• Appropriately sharing planning expertise and resources with our church
centers around the world
• Understanding more deeply what could effectively address our
organizational chafe-points. The goal is a more vibrant world-wide
church that is effectively helping people make progress toward heaven.
In terms of plan design, we took the approach of focusing on what the
centralized General Church can do, without desiring to dictate what should
ha ppen at the congregational level. We also expect that many traditional uses,
1 The team consists of Brian Keith, Peter Buss Jr., Karen Stoeller, Charlotte Gyllenhaal, David Lindrooth,
David Frazier and Chuck Ebert.
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