“It is time to put our actions in line with our words.”

by the Right Reverend Thomas Clark Ely, Bishop of Vermont
Mountain Echo
March 2005

In the Broadway play, My Fair Lady, Eliza sings a song to her young suitor Freddy in which she beseeches him: “if you’re in love, show me!” We all know the phrase “actions speak louder than words,” and I suspect we have uttered them to others on more than one occasion. I know I have. I suppose the biblical way of saying this is, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Of course, it is always possible to get too focused on results and loose sight of the relational dimension of something, but for the most part I think we do hope that our efforts lead to good results.

The action of Diocesan Convention to adopt the Strategic Plan for Growth and Ministry in the Diocese of Vermont, 2005-2010, was an important decision in the life of our diocese. The effort put forth by many, many people throughout the diocese produced a well thought out and exciting plan for our ministry together over the next several years.

Now it is time to go to work implementing that plan. It is time to put our energy into accomplishing what we laid out as our hopes and dreams for our diocese. It is time to put our actions in line with our words. It is time to “show” ourselves and others that what we believe in our hearts and say with our lips we intend to practice in our life as a diocese. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work on this and I hope you are as well!

The diocesan Strategic Plan for Growth and Ministry is built around a Diocesan Council vision of a lively, mission-oriented church that discerns and welcomes God’s call to us as a Diocese.

The five interwoven themes emerging from this call are:
Formation
Liberation
Communication
Connection
Celebration

The seven key ministry areas identified in the plan are:
Christian Education and Youth Ministry
Parish Life and Spiritual Growth
Outreach and Social Justice Ministry
Communication Ministry
Organizational, Structural and Financial Ministries
Parish to Parish and Parish to Diocese Ministry
Rock Point

Specific goals, action plans, timelines and cost estimates are spelled out in considerable detail. It’s all there for you to read on the Diocesan Web Site, www.dioceseofvermont.org. I hope you are becoming familiar with this vision and plan and that you will work toward its positive outcomes. I am convinced that the best way for this plan for growth and ministry to accomplish the outcomes for which we long is to engage as many of us as possible in the implementation work that lies before us.

To that end, brochures summarizing the plan are on their way to all parishes in ample quantity. Diocesan Council will begin the work of implementation at its March meeting. It will be an important tool for Council in the setting of priorities for the 2006 Diocesan Budget and for future budgets as well. I am asking every diocesan entity, institution, committee, commission and organization to spend time in conversation with this plan and find concrete ways to relate and help carry out its goals. I invite vestries and congregations to find a place of direct connection and involvement with the goals articulated in the plan. I encourage individual members of our diocese to see where they can best support the plan’s goals for our common life as a diocese and to go to work helping make this plan truly an action plan.

I see the next several years during which we will implement this plan as an important “Season of the Spirit” for our diocese. I believe the Holy Spirit was as work in and through us as this plan was developed and its goals for the future articulated. We spent time listening to God’s voice in each person who participated in the “Plannaging Process,” and now it is time for each person to share in giving life and shape to what the Spirit is doing in our midst. Most of all I ask each one of us to pray for our diocese and this plan for growth and ministry. May it truly be a plan that we own, that we support and that we carry out under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and all to the Glory of God.

Faithfully,
+Thomas