“Encouraging! Invigorating! Cohesiveness, with a lot of similar ideas.” These are words participants shared to describe their experience at our first Visioning meeting, held on Saturday morning, February 8. We met to share our ideas and hopes for design of the expansion of our church building. Nearly 100 people of all ages participated, filling the Sky Room and hallway with earnest discussion, attentive listening and warm laughter.
We started at 9:00 am with a chalice lighting and brief review of the research, the vote to “stay and renovate”, and the work since then. Our architect Scott Rodwin set expectations, and with his UUCB project leaders led us through three engaging activities:
At our tables, we took a few minutes to discuss and answer each of 5 questions about a renovation, such as “What is currently missing or needs to be changed?”,“What should be a priority?” and “What does ‘sacred space’ look like and feel like to you?”. After the discussions, the whole room got to listen as the notetaker at each table shared all their key ideas.
During “Table Topics”, each table was assigned one of 10 topics, such as worship space, sustainability, music, audio-visual, kitchen, RE/Families/Kids, etc. Everyone moved to their topic of interest, and had 10 minutes to share, then move to another table (3 topics in 30 minutes). Once again, we all listened as the notetaker at each table shared all the key ideas.
In the final activity, we flocked to the walls where rows of “inspiration” photos and images were posted. We studied all those pictures and placed a small red heart sticker on the images we liked.
We concluded just after Noon, energized and hopeful. It was wonderful that so many could participate and contribute their ideas. People were attentive, and actively engaged in the discussions and the feedback. Our architect Scott said this Visioning event was an A+ for the engagement of participants and the harvesting of so many ideas; the project team will have a lot to digest. Both Scott and quite a few participants observed that there was already an emerging cohesion of some similar themes and priorities.