Spreading our Roots…
Expanding our Tent Stakes
Facilitator: Dr. Barbara Anne Fisher
On Tuesday, April 30th, Dr. Barbara Anne Fisher led our Vestry retreat. The verse that she used to focus our day was “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) Barb had us think of St Peter’s as a tree.
After brief introductions, we broke into pairs, and each person shared his journal entries with his partner. Each partner then told the other person’s story to the whole group.
Through the sharing of stories, we came up with what we believe are the roots that ground us and hold us together—our connections with one another as community, our grounding in scripture, and our reaching out in sacrificial love to others. We decided that the trunk of the tree is love, and the branches come out of this love.
Then we named the branches of the tree that make up who we are at St Peter’s, the different areas of discipleship here at St. Peter’s. These include:
- mission
- fellowship
- worship
- scriptural formation
- hospitality
- outreach
- pastoral support
Then we created “leaves” that represent all of the things we do in these areas. Two baskets hold leaves that we want to “fertilize” and leaves we would like to prune.
Our next step was to identify the components of each area. For example we decided that mission includes Hunters for the Hungry, Community dinners, Tools for the Sudan, Toilets for Haiti, the Jail Ministry, the Food Pantry, Samaritan’s Purse. Each area was assigned a color, and we wrote the component parts of each area on pieces of paper shaped like leaves in the appropriate color.
Barbara had prepared a tree of brown paper with roots and branches, and we taped the colored leaves on the bare branches to make the canopy of the tree. We were amazed at the size of the canopy. Barbara mentioned that we should consider pruning and fertilizing some of the activities we had listed.
After spending some time in prayer, we shared the visions that we have for St Peter’s and what gifts we can share to bring these visions into reality. These visions included having a full church every Sunday, drawing people to become more involved, growing the core of youth, bringing in young families and teenagers, and expanding what we can offer to younger people.
We talked about what it would mean to expand our tent stakes and to have “church without walls.” Some ideas included having a community Bible study at the fire house, holding a book group for young people at the Port Royal library, and having church under a tent on the town green in order to welcome everyone in.
The Vestry will be exploring the possibilities of implementing some of these ideas in the coming months.