Greetings My Dear Plymouth Family,

This week’s Moderator installment (I’m beginning to feel like I’m writing a Serial…!) is focused on the plan that Council arrived at for creating the charter and forming the committee that will take the baton from the Exploratory Development Committee.

As I’m sure you all are aware, on January 8, 2023, the congregation voted to approve the EDC’s recommendation that we redevelop our property. Subsequently, the Council held a special meeting on January 11 to craft a plan for creating a committee charter and a process for forming the new committee. Two Council sub-committees were formed to draft the charter and the committee self-nomination tool. I am serving on both sub-committees to ensure that we are consistent across these efforts, but the two sub-committees are in frequent conversation with each other so there are multiple brains and hearts focused on our inter-locking tasks. After the sub-committees finish their work, the materials will go to the rest of Council and to Clergy for editing and review, and then we will share them with our redevelopment consultants, Meriwether Partners, LLC for their feedback.

Both the charter and the committee self-nomination materials will be finished ahead of the January 29 Annual Meeting. We will share the materials and the related processes and timelines with the congregation at the meeting as well as in the February 1 edition of the Herald. This sharing will include a formal invitation for everyone who is in covenant with Plymouth Church to consider nominating themselves to serve on the committee if they wish.

In the meantime, if you know of someone in covenant at Plymouth who you think would do a terrific job on this committee, please give them a call or drop them a note encouraging them to apply. Sometimes people don’t see all of their own gifts and could use a kind nudge or a bit of encouragement to take on things outside their comfort zones.

Before closing, I will share that helping to craft these materials in the service of this exciting and quite humbling undertaking that our community has voted to pursue has been incredibly rewarding and inspiring. I am so looking forward to seeing how this huge, holy, audacious work unfolds!

Peace and love,

Tracy Simpson, Plymouth Council Moderator

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe