June 2022 “Thoughts from you Regional Minister”
By Ken Marston, Co-Regional Minister & Interim President
Tri-Regional Partnership.
Governance Project.
Transformative Community Conferencing.
These are names of three significant initiatives that have the potential to transform the life of our church in all its expressions: local congregations, the Christian Church in Kansas, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) . You will be hearing more about these initiatives in the coming months from various sources, but I wanted to use this message to give a brief introduction to each.
The Tri-Regional Partnership was initiated about two years ago when Bill Rose-Heim, Regional Minister of Greater Kansas City, Chris Morton, Regional Minister of Nebraska, Co-Regional Minister Steve Martin, and I had a conversation. The focus of this conversation was our mutual concern about how the three regions could more effectively nurture vitality in our congregations.
After three or four conversations we recruited three regional leaders from each region to form a partnership steering committee. We then engaged a consultant from the Kansas Leadership Center to help us clarify what we were wanting to accomplish and an effective adaptive process that would help us make progress on transforming regional church life .
The Governance Project is about transforming how our denomination is structured and how it makes decisions. Holding General Assemblies every three years; streamlining the number of people on a more empowered nimble General Board to make decisions between assemblies; and each congregation appointing three assembly representatives for three-year terms are some of what is being considered. These Assembly representatives would be invited to quarterly conversations by video conferencing leading up to General Assembly time to discuss issues the church is facing. These conversations will help determine the agendas of General Board and General Assembly meetings.
Transformative Community Conferencing is a process developed by Dr. David Anderson Hooker to facilitate deep conversations about difficult issues. It promotes understanding and builds community in groups. It is a process that helps us stay in relationship with each other even when we disagree and will be the process for the quarterly video conferences.
Watch for more information about each of these initiatives.