Dear Beloved Community,
Over the past couple of months, you've been receiving updates on our vision process from Council members. Today I'm excited to share with you as a Council member and as the Vice Moderator of Denver Presbytery, but perhaps most importantly as a member of our recently formed Vision Construction Team (VCT). Our hope is that you will recognize that Council, Presbytery Leadership, and the VCT are openly communicating about the process and sharing details about how to become part of the conversation. Our updates from this point on will be written by members of the VCT so that we can keep you posted of the progress.
Our consultant, Corey Schlosser-Hall, leads excellent meetings during which we learn much about one another and have begun to get a grasp of the momentous work ahead of us. We have chosen to embrace Corey’s definition of vision as, “the capacity to ‘taste and see’ what God is doing at the intersections between God’s people and the world God loves so that other can ‘taste and see’ it, participate in it, pray for it, be transformed by it.”
Corey has helped us establish a timeline, and Council has approved it. Our goal is to move ever forward, checking in with the goals for each “Chapter” of our work. Currently we are in the “Curate and Generate” chapter which will help us cull the best of what our previous team learned; review the input the body of our Presbytery has offered; listen to the thoughts and questions being offered now; and begin to generate dialogue to help us into the next chapter of “Tangibilitate.” We tangibilitate when we put words and language to the ideas and thoughts that are taking shape.
My teammates highlight what they would like for you to know about our work together:
We will be meeting weekly to keep our momentum going and to hold one another accountable for the reading and tasks we are to do outside of meeting time.
We recognize together that vision is not driven by one person, but best discerned in a group (this is the Presbyterian way of doing most discernment); this means we need your input as well to say we are doing the work of Presbytery. Please pay attention to the ways you can make your voice heard and be assured that the VCT would love to hear from you via email or a call.
Following through with a new vision leads us to recognize we need to become a Presbytery that is constantly seeking God’s vision, always listening and responding, and remembering that we are participating in God’s vision – not our own.
I have already been touched by the breadth of experience and wisdom that is exhibited by my fellow Vision Construction Team. One member offered us a reminder that Vision typically does not come like a lightening strike or a mountain top moment; vision comes often through small discussions, attentive listening, and paying attention to how God has already begun that work in and among us.
I pray you have the same hope I hold: we can move together into these unknown times holding the most important thing in focus: our God has made an invitation to “taste and see” – will you come? You can share with us in this process by praying a simple, "May your vision for the DP be clear and may we be faithful to taste and see." You can also email the VCT at VCT@denpres.org. I promise you that we are engaging with all input that our DP family share, and that we want to be truly open to how God is moving here and now.
Thankful to serve you,
Rev. Paula M. Daniel Steinbacher
Vice Moderator
Denver Presbytery Council
Vision Construction Team