You are invited to help the Conference Vision Team!
Recently, a team of 15 representatives from Associations and Conference forwarded a report to the Board of Directors. That report imagined different ways to shape the Ohio Conference and its Associations.
The Vision Team declared to the Board of Directors that we need to become “one nimble and responsible judicatory that is faithful in mission and responsible in stewardship.”
The Board agreed. And that’s where you come in. (Read Moderator’s report on the recent Board meeting here.)
You are invited to study two documents prepared by the Vision Team. Let them provoke your own creative ideas for how we can become that “nimble and responsive judicatory.”
The Vision Team offers two documents for starters. One is titled “For Such a Time as This.” The authors comment, “We are called to reimagine and reconstruct an organizational model of the church that faithfully fills the vision God has placed on our hearts: a connected, covenantal church, living the vision of Jesus Christ throughout our communities, states, and local regions.”
You will find reflections of how our present structure for a Conference evolved and information about our current realities.
A second document is titled “Conference Structure Process.” It offers an example of how a restructure effort could take place. While the report makes several observations about consolidation of programming, staff and resources, the Board stresses that this document is a “concept” intended to initiate a broad discussion and is not a plan which it has adopted.
Next steps recommended by the Board are for all of us throughout the Conference, in our Associations, in our congregations, and in any of our gatherings, to study these two reports and share ideas with the Vision Team for how to be a “new Ohio Conference.”
Here’s how to find the documents:
For Such a Time as This (PDF)
Conference Structure Process (PDF)
We welcome your comments and ideas below. Correspond with interim Conference Minister John Gantt at jmg@occucc.org. Your thoughts will be forwarded to the Vision Team which continues to challenge us to “boldly choose to declare a new way of being church together for just such a time as this.”
Whether knowingly or unknowingly, "we" (the members and churches) of the Ohio Conference have been slowly strangling the Conference to death for 40 years. This is due, of course, to the unique hybrid nature of the OC, and the directional "flow" of OCWM. I have been told repeatedly that we "HAVE to have a conference structure "because of General Synod" and because "everyone else is structured that way." Maybe that’s true...but is it really, I wonder? NONE of our institutions is what they used to be--and all are being challenged to be innovative and creative "for such a time as this." When you get down to it, we've been "restructuring" it seems (at every level) for at least 20 years or longer. So--in an age of decentralization, loss of trust in institutions in general, and continued declining support from local churches for judicatories--WHY is practical to dissolve our Associations (the judicatory level "closest" and best-known to our Ohio UCC congregations)? I know this is not a new thought; but I have not yet seen any PRACTICAL discussion of exactly how and why we MUST "fit the mold", so to speak (it is possible I have missed some of this discussion--not exactly in the loop anymore!). But I wonder, WHO is it among us, all the way up to and including General Synod, who must be creative, flexible, and innovative?
I am in agreement that something needs to be done because of the decline in support. But I hope that there will be more conversation around the conference and current associations than is indicated in the article I read. This is a massive undertaking. I was coordinator when Northwest re-organized and it took a lot of people and talk to get that project done and it never really was successful. This effort needs to be successful because our future as a conference depends on it as well as the associations. (whatever that will look like). I like the name change suggestion because we are more than just Ohio. Good luck and my hope is that the team includes groups that will provide their ideas too.