Hello Plymouth,

In case you haven’t heard the great news, the congregation voted this past Sunday to support the Exploratory Development Committee’s recommendation to move forward with redeveloping our property!

Over 100 of us gathered in Hildebrand and online after worship for the Congregational vote, which means we solidly met our quorum requirements. Those present voted overwhelmingly in favor of pursuing redevelopment. The next step in the process is that a new committee will take the baton from the EDC and will obtain further information from all 6 developers who have expressed interest in the project. This committee will then move to the Request for Proposals (RFP) stage with a subset of the developers.

The Council is meeting off-cycle this week to start preparing the charge for the next committee and to establish how we are going to form that committee. At this point I am not sure exactly what our timing will be, but please be on the look out for announcements from us about these crucial steps in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, if you have feedback for Council on the past month’s meetings and discussion opportunities about the redevelopment question, please let us know either by emailing me, tracysimpson7@gmail.com, or the new Church Council email address: council@plymouthchurchseattle.org. We would love to hear what worked well for you and what you think we can improve on going forward. This “after action” information will help guide Council as we invite the congregation into the next phase of conversations about our path forward with redevelopment.

I will close by saying that as excited as I am about our decision to pursue redevelopment I am even more excited about how we came together as a faith community to make this decision. It is clear to me that we were not all on the same page all of the time, and it is equally clear to me that we listened to one another with open hearts and used our relationship covenant to stay respectful and kind. I am confident that if we continue these ways of being together, we will stay grounded in the spirit and in our love for one another and that the rest of this process will unfold in ways that we can feel very, very good about.

I’m so happy to be on this journey with you all.

Peace and love,

Tracy Simpson, Plymouth Church Moderator