Mission Discernment Process

The Mission Action Plan (MAP) process helps congregations discern God’s plan as it emerges in
community exploration. It is an important tool for congregations with a newly called clergy
partner and for congregations seeking to realign their mission and ministry with God’s will. The
MAP process helps congregations discern God’s plan as it emerges during 5 activities of
discernment and exploration: Living History; Prayer Walk or Neighborhood Conversations;
Community Panel; World Cafe; and Parish Summit. Each event builds on the previous one and
understanding and inspiration grows throughout the process!

1st Activity: Congregational Living History
During the Living History activity, members and clergy explore their roots and history. As the
stories of your life in the parish are told, you will discover Holy Spirit led places of power and
revisit places of difficulty. This activity calls us to look and listen for the ways God’s vision for
the parish was accomplished, detoured, triumphant, and frustrated over the years. The Living
History activity allows congregations to build a comprehensive group understanding of the
collective story of the parish and connect individual stories with the world and God. The Living
History event is not meant to solve anything or identify everything. It begins the process of
awareness of your stories, builds capacity to make decisions based in the present, and finds
sources of identity and spiritual empowerment in the parish’s communal story. This activity
builds the capacity of the clergy, vestry, and members to discern and respond to God’s call now
by building God’s Kingdom in our community today.

2nd Activity: Neighborhood Exploration through Prayer and Conversations
These activities help to identify the current context of your church – your local neighborhoods.
Walking in groups (of 2 to 4 members with no more than 1 vestry per group) and prayerfully
observing through the church’s neighborhoods and local gathering places, the group asks God to
bring to their attention to what God desires them to see. Pictures are taken to memorialize what is
observed and captions are generated for each picture. The group pauses for prayer at each
location God draws them to. Afterwards, the vestry gathers for a debriefing session to share
stories of what was seen and to talk about what the church can learn from the observations

3rd Activity: Community Panel
The third activity expands the mission discernment process to incorporate and engage with
neighbors. This can be done in person or via Zoom. The priest and vestry identify potential
panelists of community leaders and stakeholders. They are invited to share what their challenges
are, where they are seeing health in the community, and what they are building on. During their
presentations, listen (without comment) for alignment and connections to previous
discernment/insights that emerged during Living History and Prayer Walk or Neighborhood
Conversations. Listen for the relationships, mutual blessings, and shared mission possibility
among local community partners and with your congregation.

4th Activity: World Cafe
During this discernment activity (as with the Living History) the whole parish is gathered along
with neighbors. It is important to identify and invite neighbors who live or work in the
communities surrounding the church, especially those not represented in the membership.
Another classification of neighbors to invite are community leaders. During this activity
members and neighbors will explore the key questions identified during the Community Panel
debriefing. These questions should be about mutual blessings and ways forward in service.

5th Activity: Parish Summit
Using focused conversations, the congregation gathers to create a basic ten-year plan from the
year of exploration and conversations. The plan will be defined by realistic goals and objectives.
The plan envisioned will grow as you (clergy, congregation, and neighbors) live into and refine
the call from the Holy Spirit to ministry in the church and community.

Background from Strategic Plan
In 2019, a 2030 Vision /Strategic Planning Committee was formed to discern God’s hope for our
congregation, and the power of the Holy Spirit.  The committee was charged with identifying St.
Luke’s five core values, and constructing a tactical plan to live up to those values with specific,
achievable short-term goals. The committee members participated in various focus groups
comprised of congregants, each of which discussed topics such as “what drew you to St. Luke’s”
and “what are our five strengths and five weaknesses.” Based on this input, the committee
established the following as our core values: Worship, Faith Formation, Fellowship, Outreach
and Stewardship. The report was intended to also guide us and our new Rector with the
forthcoming transition. The pandemic has caused us to re-think what kind of community we can
or need to be in new and challenging ways.  We are looking to discern and define with our new
rector what St. Luke’s and “church” will be in the future.
As part of this plan, we established that we must consider the needs of, and outreach to, an
increasingly diverse population in East Hampton’s unique and ever-changing combination of
full-time and weekend residents. The fullest sense of diversity includes race, gender, sexual
orientation, background, socioeconomic status, and prior religious experience. Also, we must
keep pace with technological change and apply lessons learned during Covid-19 to pursue the
church’s mission and meet people where they are through a range of physical and virtual
methods. It will be important to make progress on both objectives without leaving behind or
alienating parish members whose experiences have been accustomed to tradition.