Latest feedback added: Congregant #10, 1/13/21 at 5:49 PM

• Remember, this is the first draft of our new Mission Commitment. We need your input between now and January 15th to refine it.
• Every day, new feedback will be posted here in red italics so everyone can see the feedback process as it occurs.
• On January 17th, we will post a revised draft reflecting our best efforts to incorporate your feedback.

Feedback on Values:

• Congregant #4, 1/5/21 -- In general, I love the values! They are spot on with who we are and becoming:*
  • For "Inclusive Community" There is no mention of people with disabilities or women specifically.*
  • "Organizing for justice" is all anthropocentric - they aren’t any real concerns for ecology (destruction of the planet) or beings beyond humans (animals, etc.). I would like to see that reflected in our justice column, even if it’s not a priority at the moment. We could undoubtedly extend oppression to the Earth and animals. Also, it’s undeniably one of the most pressing justice issues of our time.*

• Congregant #6, 1/6/21 -- Suggest following changes:*
  • Value #1: Would add "encounter", as in, "ensure all people encounter and feel genuine love..."*
  • Value #3: Would change "...*

• Congregant #9, 1/10/21 -- Love the values.*

• Change Notes, 1/15/21: The values are inteended to be simply listed, ("Inclusive Community, Relational Spirituality, Organizing for Justice) with the praftices serving to provide examples of each. For that reason, the suggestions in this section have been incorporated into the practices.

Feedback on Practices:

• Congregant #3, 1/5/21 -- I love what these practices represent, but I wish they were simplified. 15 practices seems overwhelming to think about and many of them seem closely related.*

• Collaborative Partner #1, 1/6/21 -- Thank you for making us part of this. I can only say that If a third of the Christian Churches in Oceanside alone would focus only on 30% of your mission, we would be in a better place. Question (from my non-atheist/agnostic perspective:-), if your church wants to affirm lgbt identities I would go a little further to say that the church supports the sacrament of marriage. The reason why is that too many churches preach inclusivity but stop short to the sacrament of marriage. If you do perform same-gender marriages, (I believe you do), I would say that:-) so people know what you mean when you are intentional in your support.*

• Congregant #6, 1/6/21 -- Suggest following changes: Practices of Inclusive Community: Would add "Christian", as in, "We hold a non-credal posture of Christian faith."*

  • Practices of Relational Spirituality: Would add "regular reading of scripture together" between "We practice" and "dialogical approach"*

  • Practices of Organizing For Justice: Would add "and because we understand it is our calling as Christians to do so" after "build peace in our communities."*

  • Would also love to see mention of a purposeful commitment to including those who have been traditionally been denied access to church participation and leadership roles, i.e. women, minorities, LGBTQA+, etc.

• Congregant #8, 1/8/21 — Here is a thought I have reference this statement: We welcome, affirm, and fully include LGBTQ persons regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. I think it should be: "We welcome, affirm and fully include LGBTQ persons." We should drop the "regardless..." part and add, "We see an affirming, Biblically recognizable, place for people who live as they are in our Christian community. We believe in the sacrament of marriage for all loving couples, regardless of gender, sexuality or identity."*

• Congregant #9, 1/10/21 —
  • On the inclusive community practices, I'm glad that we specifically call out that we are LGBTQ-affirming, since that's often not the case in churches. But I think we're missing something about inclusive across other dimensions, like race and gender. I think we need a practice about how to continually grow as an inclusive community, or how to address instances in which we unintentionally exclude people based on an aspect of their identity. In church I have been repeatedly sidelined and/or disrespected because of my gender and/or race. It's even happened a few times at Oceanside Sanctuary, though thankfully not very often. Inclusivity is hard, even if you believe wholeheartedly in it, and I think to truly practice it we have to be willing to acknowledge when we fall short and change in response.
  • I don't understand what taking a dialogical approach to scripture actually means in practice. Might be good to clarify.
  • I don't love the bullet around "collaborative teams of equals." Hard to name why, but I think it feels inauthentic to me? Removing hierarchy and making things collaborative takes quite a bit of work beyond just saying there's no hierarchy (in my experience here and elsewhere, hierarchies either 1) emerge organically in the absence of structure, or 2) already exist but go unnamed). I don't know that we're quite ready to truly commit to this practice, and I also don't think it's necessarily critical to relational spirituality.
  • Love the justice practices.*

• Change Notes, 1/15/21 -- Lots of changes were made to the practices based on this feedback and the feedback above under "values." Specific language was added to be more broadly and intentionally inclusive of women, persons of color, disabled persons, etc. We incorprated most of the suggested language changes. We made changes to attempt to clarify what is meant by a "dialogical approach to scripture" and reworded this in what is hopefully a less jargon-heavy way. The practice referring to "collaborative teams of equals without hierarchy" has been removed; the feedback on that items helpfully pointed out that this was more an ideal than a practice. Finally, many of these practices as they were written reflected significant overlap or redundant themes, so several have been combined and the whole list has been simplified down from 15 to 9 practices.*

Feedback on Vision:*

• Congregant #3, 1/5/21 -- This might seem like a small thing, and maybe it's just me, but in the vision statement I really like the phrase "Christian spirituality" vs "Christianity". It seems less institutional and more accessible to people who might have been hurt by churches before.*

• Congregant #6, 1/6/21 -- "To collectively live out an expression of inclusive, relational, and impactful Christian spirituality (or Christianity) in our personal lives, our communities, and our world."

• Congregant #9, 1/10/21 -- Love the vision statement

• Change Notes, 1/16/21 -- We changed the word "refreshing" to "collective" per the input above. We did not add "personal lives, our communities, and our world" because it seemed better to incorpate that language into the mission statement, which used a similar construction.

Feedback on Mission:

• Congregant #3, 1/5/21 -- In the mission I like that "families, neighborhoods, and cities" expands on our previous mission, which seemed more focused on the city. This feels more personal while also expanding outward.

• Congregant #4, 1/5/21 -- I think there needs to be an intra-personal element to our statement. This statement is mostly collective, which I think needs to be the majority of our focus, but not to the exclusion of individual growth. Also, if single, some may not identify with families. Lastly, personal transformation influences collective transformation and vice versa.

• Congregant #6, 1/6/21 -- I Would love to see this mission statement be expanded and more global: "We also want to learn to practice and grow the love, peace and justice of Christ in our workplaces, our friendships, our countries, our political systems, and ultimately our world."

• Congregant #7, 1/7/21 -- Maybe use the word “relationships” instead of "families"?

• Congregant #9, 1/10/21 -- I really like the mission statement, but I wonder if there's a way to add something in about doing these things together. One of the hallmarks of our church is our emphasis on coming together, even across lines of difference.

• Change Notes, 1/17/21 -- Lots of good feedback on the mission. We made small changes to try add an emphasis on person transformation as well as social. We've also incorprated language to be more inclsuive of people who are single and that this work is done together in community.

Feedback on Priorities:

• Congregant #2, 1/4/21 -- Though the Priorities are listed as unnumbered bullets, they still provide an unwritten order. Recommend the following order:

  1. Learn to empower and reproduce refreshing expressions of Christian spirituality locally and remotely.
  2. Grow opportunities for deeper relationships beyond the Sunday Gathering.
  3. Become more intentionally affirming and inclusive of LGBTQ persons.
  4. Become more committed to anti-racism and racial-healing work.
  5. Empower youth in their own expressions of a Christ-inspired spirituality.

  Given the current vision and mission statements are about building refreshing Christian actions, I suggest putting those priorities that directly relate high on the list of 'unnumbered' bullets.

• Congregant #4, 1/5/21 -- While I wholly agree with "Become more intentionally affirming and inclusive of LGBTQ persons”, I wonder if it pigeonholes us too much. What about women, people of color, disabled, marginalized communities in general, etc.? I wonder if there’s a way to intentionally include them all (oppressed communities) while focusing on specific groups?
  • For instance, having a disabled community in mind will force us to evaluate our building and accessibility. In turn, this helps everyone, but perhaps it would be overlooked if we only focused on LGBTQ. However, I also understand there’s only so much we can do in 3 years.
  • At the very least, though, I think acknowledging the intention of affirmation and inclusion for all marginalized communities should be a strong priority.
  • Perhaps: “Become more intentionally affirming and inclusive of marginalized communities, especially LGBTQ persons.”

• Congregant #5, 1/5/21 -- I do think we need to add women as a marginalized group. The “church" throughout history, has done great damage to women who were natural-born leaders or who were considered “temptresses" based on their appearance or intelligence. Much of the Christian faith, even today, has used the Bible to suppress the gifts of women so as not to usurp the authority of men. We have much to do to combat these disqualifying and pervasive perceptions within our own congregation and community. While we have gone far to include women on our board and in leadership there is still more to do.

• Congregant #7, 1/7/21 -- I don’t know if I necessarily agree with putting things in order, since our order will likely change.

• Congregant #9, 1/10/21 -- This is more of a question than a piece of feedback, but what does the priority around youth mean, and where does that come from? I like the general sentiment but would be curious to understand more about what we're envisioning here.

• Change Notes, 1/17/21 -- We changed the order of the priorities. We added language to be more inclusive of a broader set of marginalized groups, as with the practices above.

General Feedback:

• Congregant #1, 1/4/21 -- Having read through all of this I am deeply moved and in awe of how we have grown over the years. And equally grateful that I am a part of all this! This looks amazing Jason and all who have been working on this over the past few months. I think what you have here and proposals for going forward are excellent and ones I am fully in support of.

• Congregant #4, 1/5/21 -- Overall, this is a realllllly incredible mission! It’s beautiful to see how we’ve evolved and grown over the past years. I’m excited about the direction and focus of our mission.

• Congregant #5, 1/5/21 -- I am extremely excited about what we have done here at OSC! This process has taken us to a place of being firmly committed to our community within the context of a Christ-Centered lens.

• Congregant #6, 1/6/21 -- As a woman who had very few meaningful opportunities to have a voice in the direction and leadership of the churches I have been a part of in the past, I am grateful for Oceanside Sanctuary and the equality of opportunity it affords me and others who traditionally have been denied that access. I would appreciate some type of statement being added about us as a church being committed to or making a purposeful effort to encourage women (and other marginalized groups of people) to take an equal part in leadership positions.

• Congregant #7, 1/7/21 -- I do think something needs to be added in about women and the disabled. I’m not sure if there’s a way to group the LGBTQ+, women black and brown communities and the disabled, together. I think naming them separately has power.

• Congregant #9, 1/10/21 -- Overall I love this direction, and it feels like a natural next step in our journey as a church. Really appreciate all the hard work that Jason and others put in to get us to this point, and I'm especially grateful for how transparent and collaborative this process has been.

• Congregant #10, 1/13/21 -- I am very impressed by the work and wisdom that went into preparing the original document, as well as the thoughtfulness of the subsequent comments. Thank you!