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Hi Friends,
As we head into what is typically a quiet week for many in our community, we wanted to take this opportunity to share more about our Strategic Planning work – how it came about, why it’s important, and how it relates to previous planning initiatives.
As a community, there is so much we want to do. Strategic planning is an important tool for charting our way forward. Our last comprehensive strategic plan was written in 2006 and revisited in 2016. One outcome of our 2006 strategic plan was to start a preschool. Now it is hard to imagine our community without TCEE! As the Jewish landscape changes, locally and nationally, it’s wise to take another look at our strategy and see where it is meeting our needs well, and where new needs have arisen.
We are fortunate to have been chosen by CJP to receive consultation from their Leadership Development Institute. Through a process of gathering community input — from individual interviews, surveys, community meetings, small groups, and email feedback — and analyzing it for trends, we are poised to uncover and aggregate the strengths and opportunities of our congregation. At our recent community meeting, we collected lots of feedback on the survey and dreams for the future.
The consultants’ role is to hold up the mirror. They don’t know us as well as we know ourselves, but with a dispassionate, objective eye, they can help us to see each other and see ourselves, so that we can move forward in strength.
The role of the Leadership Team (which might better be called the Community Facilitation Team) is to help draw out people’s feedback, help the community to hear each other, and to do the behind-the-scenes work of engaging members in a variety of ways, right where they are.
Congregations are often faced with complicated choices: what is the right Clergy/Staff configuration for our community? Should we have more adult education programming or more music events? How can we serve a diverse congregation with diverse needs? What is most important to our community and what will help us build the strongest community for the future? We expect that the result of our 2018 strategic planning will enable us to build a stronger, more vibrant, more active and, yes, even a larger community going forward, one that represents all the best of what we are today and what we hope to be in the future. We hope you will join us at the March 11th community meeting to help crystallize our vision for Ohabei Shalom.
Click here for an overview of the CJP Population study, which details the changing Jewish landscape in Boston.
Click here for a terrific analysis of the study’s findings, adapted from an article by former President of Congregation Kehillath Israel, David Williams.
B’vracha (in blessings)
Rachel and Georgia
