St James Strategic Plan - May 16, 2001

Introduction and Overview

In January 2000, with the beginning of a new fiscal year for St James UMC, a new committee was formed to look at the future of St James.  An additional charge given this committee was to attempt to establish a long range or  “strategic" Plan for the future.  This plan would identify key objectives for all phases of church operations and methods for monitoring progress towards established goals and strategies for reaching them. 

This committee met monthly this past year including a day long retreat where they developed the outline of the Long Range (Strategic) Plan.  In order for any plan to be successful, it has to be put into action. It was decided that the various committees of St. James would be the appropriate avenue to not only put the plan into action, but to complete its development as well such that there would be a sense of ownership.

The Long Range Planning Committee then met with the Church Council, which includes the various committee chairpersons of St James UMC, to explain the beginnings of the Long Range Plan and to request the assistance of each committee in completing development of its portion of the Plan.  In general each committee was to further develop the goals or objectives of their Committee and then develop strategies or action items to accomplish these objectives. Each committee worked on their key objectives and strategies to meet these objectives and delivered their committee plan back to the Church Council.  These committees did an excellent job and were very inclusive with the original objectives identified by the planning committee and often added others to their plans.

Each committee's plan together with our mission statement and vision statement  (which have been updated by the planning committee), form the current St James Strategic Plan.  Our current Strategic Plan is a combination of a Long Range Plan and an Annual Plan.  It is a document that gives us both current and future direction and will be further developed and refined in future years.

There remain two long range issues that were identified by the planning committee but have not yet been addressed in our current strategic plan.
         1.  Christian Education -
         2. Organizational and Leadership Development -
The Long Range Planning Committee feels these are extremely important areas for our church and encourages the Church Council to address these issues.  The draft plans for these two issues are included as items # 10 and # 11 in our current plan,

It is important to remember that no plan is perfect and this plan will be an ever changing document, which will need to be kept current in order to be the most useful to our church. It is hoped that everyone will not only become aware of our Strategic Plan, but will work toward its objectives in building the future of St James UMC such that we will truly "be led in faith by God's Love, Spirit and Grace".

                           Yours In Christ,
                           The Long Range Planning Committee