Presbytery of Southern New England

Presbytery of Southern New England: who are they?

The Presbytery of Southern New England is comprised of 26 congregations, each of which is a unique community rooted in the love, peace and justice of Jesus Christ.

One of the ways the Presbytery seeks to support these congregations is by empowering leadership for each community to guide their congregants as they discern how to use and maintain their properties in service of their various needs, ministries, and priorities.

We’re providing support for presbytery leadership, and working with three congregations exploring land and property possibilities. We've organized this complex work into two phases.

Phase I: congregation + property assessment

• assess the needs and opportunities in the three individual congregations

• engage in congregational and community listening

• communicate with member churches about potential property strategies

Phase II: theology, core values + strategic filter

• articulate a theology of land and property that is rooted in their context

• discern core values that will reflect that theology

• develop a strategic filter for property decision-making based on these values

St. John the Evangelist

St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church: who are they?

St. John’s is a diverse and growing parish in St. Paul. In the 1970s, they were active in the civil rights movement, promoting voting rights, staffing a women’s center, and housing refugees. They continue to follow the radical teaching of Jesus in their commitment to justice, offering a Racial Healing Eucharist every month, and working toward the repair of the world, in their community and beyond.

Phase I: listening

St. John’s is discerning the potential for a capital campaign. To prepare, we first led a process to foster healthy relationships with money. We unpacked individual and collective money narratives and deconstructed dominant systems of power and control as they relate to financial resources.

During this listening process, we:

• facilitated a congregational-wide survey that asks questions around individual and corporate money narratives, in addition to asking questions around potential capital projects and how they connect with St. John's identity

• led a day-long, in-person retreat to explore money narratives

• interviewed community partners to understand how St. John’s is perceived and also what areas of future partnership might be ripe for exploration

• provided a report that is rooted in their faith community’s context with recommendations for future practices regarding a holistic relationship