The entire congregation is requested to be present for three crucial conversations from 12:30-2:00 p.m. following Sunday worship on February 10, 17, and 24, with your vestry and rectors to explore concretely:

• The specific needs for more and/or different sorts of physical space at St. Thomas’ Parish that a building-campaign could provide.
• Your visions of what such space for worship, meetings, hosting outside groups, community social gatherings, and offices might look like.

St. Thomas’ Parish is growing – in participation in ministry and mission, lay leadership, staffing, programs, and numbers in worship. Over the past three years we have addressed these signs of congregational health and vitality by (1) having a parish team participate in our Diocese’s “Called to Grow Program” (2) sharing lunches together to learn what this program was teaching us (3) filling out a questionnaire put together by your vestry to gather input on your sense of the significance of our parish growth (4) gathering in small groups in members homes to discuss the questionnaire (5) designing a vestry retreat to decide how parish leadership should proceed (6) holding four additional Sunday parish discussions to “Envision the Future of St. Thomas.”

Throughout this extended process of discovery and consultation, we have discovered together that our answer to God’s call to grow means:

• Our deeper faithfulness in discerning who we are and what we are called to do.
• Our provision of adequate space and resources for our life and work together.

We are called to be faithful stewards of the present and future needs for all who share one bread, one body ---- St. Thomas’ ---- a place to find and be found by God.

During the winter and spring of 2008, we face some crucial and exciting decisions together about how to proceed in addressing our growth in numbers, as we discover:

• What specific additional facilities-resources we would need in order to be the parish we are discerning that God is calling us to be.
• The options that are available for funding the building and/or renovation of the additional gathering and working spaces our life together requires.

Your vestry and clergy needs each one of you, however long you have been involved in the life of St. Thomas’ Parish, and in whatever way, to put these dates on your calendar, To prayerfully prepare for this next phase of our work together, and to be present for all three Sundays so that your input can be heard and taken into account in the decisions your Vestry will make this winter and spring.