The agenda for the Initial Assessment Visit with our UUA Stewardship Consultant, Kay Crider, is taking shape. The first set of discussions begin at 3:00pm on Friday, May 13, when Kay will have individual meetings with members of Prairie’s staff, including Kristin Famula, Diane Lavinder, and Rev. Jann Halloran.  We have reserved the Pine Drive Fire Station Meeting Room for these meetings. A Dinner Meeting with Kay and our current and incoming Board Members will conclude the first day’s activities. 

On Saturday, a series of one hour meetings with the members of our various committees will begin at 8:00am.  We plan to have these meetings in the Library at Sierra Middle School.  The schedule for the meetings follows:

From 2:00 to 3:30pm on Saturday, Kay will conduct an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) workshop that all members of the congregation are encouraged to attend. We plan to have the workshop in our Sanctuary space at Sierra Middle School.  The workshop involves reflecting on what is meaningful to the congregation about our church and brainstorming people’s hopes and dreams for our community. The principles of Appreciative Inquiry include valuing your strengths, discovering what gives our church life and vibrancy today and envisioning how to create a sustainable future. Questions to be explored include:  Why do you love this church? What do you want to become together?  How can you get there together? How can you pay for it together? The AI process works best when the entire congregation participates as a faith community.

Child care on Saturday will be available.  Kristin Famula is helping coordinate this.  We will have specific details as we get closer to the meeting date.

The purpose of the visit is to provide our church with an objective eye to gather information and identify strengths, opportunities, and areas needing improvement. By the end of the visit, Kay will develop a sequence of actions to help our church attain its long-term goals. Recommendations will be presented to the congregation on Sunday, May 15, and are followed by a detailed written report within two weeks of the visit. Please note that this assessment visit is not a financial feasibility study, which involves personal interviews with congregants about their individual financial commitments to a potential capital campaign. Readiness for a successful capital campaign, and its interrelated financial feasibility study, is analyzed during the assessment visit.

The next Project Prairie Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 6, 2011, at 7:00pm.  The meeting will be at the Pine Drive Fire Station in Parker. Since our last meeting, Tom Zanoni, Mitch Albert and I have had a series of conversations and meetings regarding the organizational structure of the Site Committee, Strategic Planning, and Project Prairie.  A significant amount of effort has been spent coming up with a first draft of a organizational type chart, and we will discuss this in more detail on April 6.