photo by Nicola Fioravanti
Between 2013 and 2016, TCL launched and formed its identity in mission and action. We tried different spiritual-growth experiments in different formats, as we still do, yet we also settled into a rhythm of what we now recognize as our dialogue community, Chortle (discipleship), mission and worship. We gained 501(c)3 status and everything!
Between 2016 and 2018, TCL experienced further stabilization, growth in the depth and breadth of our experiments as well as the time we were able to dedicate to the ministry. A part-time pastoral assistant came on to help with bookkeeping and communications.
In 2019, we began to use lessons gleaned from our work and share with other faith leaders and communities.
Between 2020-2021, we experienced growth in unforeseen ways, helping 11 faith communities across the state to reimagine service during the pandemic, in addition to working with 2 subscribing Lab Partner pastors and various other faith communities and leaders along the way. We wrote a curriculum, hired and trained a team of pastoral facilitators. The pastoral assistant’s role evolved into creatively nurturing and connecting our community, from dialoguers to donors. He also developed the social justice block to our newsletter and evolved our blog content to include a wider array of topics and perspectives related to our mission. We pivoted and pivoted and pivoted in response to pandemic needs. Our board grew significantly more active. We had our first 3 interns - each from a different seminary, and each harnessed their own gifts to perpetuate our mission while learning from it as well. Carrie worked to grow into expanded administrative responsibilities and to foster a work culture that aligns with TCL’s mission, and she did so with 7+ contractors in addition to interns.
And now here we are in 2022. Phew! And what shall this year be all about?
If 2020-21 were about pivoting to the pandemic and flexing to catch up to our operational and project-based growth,
2022 is about nurturing the heart of our mission,
further smoothing out a healthy administrative framework so as to make sure central attention stays and deepens in the realm of our dialogue community, discipleship, pastoral care, worship and mission.
It is about resourcefully making sure Carrie’s and our contractors’ time management are testaments to our mission by prioritizing spiritual groundedness, sincerity of heart in our ministry and nurturing spaces for the on-the-frontier creativity into which our mission compels us.
We often get asked questions about what growth means for TCL. This word - “growth” - in ministry has for too long implied growth in numbers. While TCL is deeply grateful to have recently been experiencing this type of growth in our own grassroots way, the heart of our mission calls for growth to be defined by depth and authenticity. Furthermore, we are called to evolution through continuous learning, experimentation, curiosity around spiritual growth, by tinkering with operational sustainability perpetuating this type of growth-by-depth mission instead of holding it hostage like some traditional models threaten these days (e.g., increased attendance or death: eek!). Then it means sharing with our neighbors what these less-paved or unpaved paths have taught us that might also help them with their missions.
At times this involves scaling up to involve more people, though simply as a strategic byproduct of the central mode of growth: go deep, and sincerely. We do of course hope we will continue to invite in more people to the work of our mission, but quantity is not a metric we are worried with, whether up or down or sideways. That is because we do not ever wish to find ourselves drifting our mission to a place where people become numbers or in which growth first means a quantity over the heart of our mission: innovative paths to spiritual growth. This is especially because we recognize spiritual growth happens through transformative experiences, which we believe are most impactfully fostered through highly relational, ongoing, small group settings, whether for dialoguers or faith leaders or anyone else.
It is with all this in mind that our 2022 metrics and goals center on what for years we have framed our annual silent vision retreat by: WMACS. That is to say, with our thoughts and actions both, we will make decisions by asking if a particular action will perpetuate and/or make our mission Whole-hearted, Mission-centric, Action-oriented, Creative and Spirit-led.
This commits our ministry to continued flexibility by our very DNA, allowing God to unfold our various next steps by pressing our attention most centrally on earnestly serving our mission on any given scale, with all our hearts, with trust in God’s guidance.
I can’t wait to discover with you where the Spirit leads this year!
Thanks be to God for our TCL community and all we are learning together, for the ways we get to both create change and find ourselves changed by God and by one another.
-Pastor Carrie