An interesting, busy weekend. I could sure use some rest!

Saturday was an all-day retreat for the board of trustees at a beautiful church in Pasadena. I think it's called Neighborhood Church, though I'm not sure. From the front it looks like a mountain lodge, all woodsy and rustic. I'm sure it's a maintenance nightmare, but I loved it.

We undertook to engage in some long term, high level thinking and discussion.

I was surprised at the difficulty most people had with absract concepts as follows:

Vision: Who we are. Why do we exist as a community? The answer to this might be something like, "We exist to bring medical care to everyone who needs it." Or, "We are a faith community that exists to seek, to listen, to serve all souls." Or, "We live to bring the light of understanding and knowledge to young and old in all communities."

Our participants had a hard time with this one. They kept wanting to define goals, not vision.

Mission statement: How we act in the world to be who we are. For instance, "We, as doctors and nurses, are a community of healers dedicated to giving medical care in all parts of the world. We support each other as we provide preventive care and medical care to every part of the globe, wherever people need us."

Another instance of a mission statement says, "The adults and children of this congregation are a community dedicated to the free and responsible search for religious truth and meaning. Our mission is to support each other as we pursue spiritual growth and challenge ourselves to transform the world through acts of love and justice." This is the mission statement of the UU Church of Fairfax.

Developing a mission statement proved to be harder than it looks. Not sure what we'll eventually come up with (goals would be easier).

Goals: The goals are set up to achieve or to work towards the values and ends implied by the mission statement. For instance, a goal might be to recruit 100 doctors for Medicins Sans Frontiers. Or a goal might be to perform outreach to the community by contributing a pickup truckload of food to the Food Pantry each week. Or a goal might be to build an effective worship leadership team.

Metrics: These were the easiest for the board members to develop, since they are the most concrete of the items discussed. Were 100 doctors recruited? Did we contribute a truckload of food each week? Did our worship team move, touch and inspire as determined by congregational feedback surveys?

I'm ready to give the brain a rest and do some mindless data inputting for work. That will give the other parts of my mind time to mull over these items (if I say "ruminate" does that mean I do it with my stomach and not my brain?). Tomorrow, after I've had time to let it develop, the insights will come more easily.

Interesting stuff. Much harder to do than one might expect.