Brighton First Develops Strategic Plan for Community Outreach

In this blog post, I offer the actions set out in the 3rd Goal of Brighton First's Strategic Plan, adopted September 13, 2016. For more information, refer to my previous blog posts. You will find a description of the process for developing the strategic plan and details for accomplishing the first goal and second goals.

Goal 3-Send People Out into the World to Serve in Christ’s Name

Diagnosis: First United Methodist Church of Brighton has a strong history of service and its mission and outreach efforts have touched many lives by providing improved living conditions, food, gas, clothing, bedding, affordable dental care, and emergency supplies and Christmas gifts for foster care children. Unfortunately, our way of doing mission has not formed strong relationships with those who are served. We have been generous with our money and our time, but not with ourselves. Growth in God’s love happens when we connect with one another. Our out-of-town mission trips have improved living conditions, but personal connections with those we assist are short term. Our mission work in the Brighton area is predominantly transactional, rather than relational. The congregation is not connecting to the community in a way that establishes long-term relationships.

Guiding Policy: Establishing relationships with others allows the love of Christ to grow. The church will move from transactional ways of serving to deepening relationships with neighbors.

Coherent Actions:

1. A Community Outreach Team will be established by September 1, 2016. The Team will be responsible for determining a community outreach focus by November 2016, through study of community demographic information and interviews with community leaders,  and providing training and events that:

1. Build relevant relationships between church members and the selected community members
2. Identify actions to enhance the lives of participants of both congregants and the selected community members
3. Demonstrate the love of Christ for all

2. The Community Outreach Team will connect the church’s existing mission and outreach teams (UMW, Quilters, Men-with-Tools, etc.) to this community outreach focus through information and programming.

3.  The Community Outreach Team will determine the efficacy of the community outreach focus through goals and assessment of whether or not goals were reached. The funds needed to sustain a program that has reached its goals will be presented to the Finance Committee in 2017 to be included in the 2018 budget.

4. The Community Outreach Team, after assessing results, will select a another segment of the population and repeat the process.