Adelphi Friends Meeting

Tending Our Roots, Nurturing Our Future

Bringing Adelphi’s Long Range Planning Process to Fruition

More than a year ago we began Adelphi’s Long Range Planning by adopting the process of Appreciative Inquiry. Our inquiry at Adelphi has now completed these two stages:

1. Discovering   What is.                   COMPLETED   

2. Envisioning   What might be.         COMPLETED

Interviews during our 50th Anniversary celebration, September 23-25, 2006, revealed these five vital themes at Adelphi Meeting as being “life giving forces”:

i)                    Spiritual growth and renewal

ii)                   A caring, sharing, community as cornerstone

iii)                 Nurturing children and youth

iv)                 Faithful stewardship of facilities, resources, and environment

v)                  Reaching out to the wider world

These themes provide a structure for today’s Report on our Appreciative Inquiry process: Tending Our Roots, Nurturing Our Future: A Vision for Adelphi Friends Meeting. With this report in hand, we now begin the final two stages of our planning process:

3. Agreeing on   What should be.       NOW BEGINNING

4. Creating         What will be.           NOW BEGINNING

Our aim is for Adelphi to achieve a shared vision for our community, to determine what new activities Adelphi will undertake and what present activities will cease, and to implement changes in process, structure, and resources as required.

 

Proposed Adelphi Planning Schedule 2007-2008       

Sept. 9, 2007:              1st Reading, this proposal
Oct. 7, 2007:            2nd Hour, Open Forum on Long-Range Planning process
Oct. 14, 2007              2nd Reading, this proposal as revised.
Nov. 11, 2007             Final planning schedule submitted to Business Meeting

December, 2007 – March, 2008:    4 Month Retreat

We propose a 4 month period of sabbatical for Adelphi committees.

During this period of retreat we ask — to the extent possible consistent with our responsibilities to Adelphi and each other — that individuals and committees free their time and energy in order to fully engage in planning for Adelphi’s future. We anticipate a series of full-community events around each of the five themes, with interest groups forming to make proposals in each of these five areas to Business Meeting in April or May, 2008.

 

Submitted for 1st Reading, Adelphi Friends Meeting for Business, September 9, 2007

By Ad Hoc Long Range Planning Committee — Debbie Bassert, Chase Clement, Martha Gay, Mary Leonard, Cheryl Morden (Clerk), Ann Marie Moriarity