Training through the Church Development Institute (CDI) helped King of Peace, Kingsland, discover its identity and impact on the community. Last year, the Rev. Al Crumpton and a group of King of Peace parishioners joined together to complete the CDI Program. They found the tools, planning models, and language so helpful that they incorporated it into their vestry retreat, and eventually their church life to help identity goals and strategies to which have led to both numeric growth and greater depth with exisiting members.
“I feel like we continue to use the CDI methods especially in our vestry meetings. They are good for providing us with a road map. Everybody has input and has ways to engage These models give us a way for everyone to be heard in an engaging way. It gives us a good way to operate as we are looking to conduct the business of the church,” says Al Crumpton. He adds that CDI helped the vestry to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses, which provides the team with a more thoughtful approach to planning for the church.
Crumpton was called to serve as rector at King of Peace in 2013. The church received parish status in 2010, months before the first rector’s departure. In the interim period, it was challenging to find its identity within the new status. However, the training received in CDI helped change that.
Creating Pathways Into the Church
CDI encourages congregations to identify those on the periphery of the church, who are named as only “vicariously” connected to the congregation and to identify pathways for those persons to be encouraged into the life of the church.
“The model that helped us establish our own identity was the Shape of the Parish Model. How is King of Peace recognized in the community outside of the church? If you asked someone from King of Peace about who we are, they would most likely identify us with the day school (families come to this campus 5 days a week) and with the Boy Scouts (families are on our campus several nights a week).”
After recognizing these vicarious communities, Crumpton invited the Rev. Walter Hobgood, Director of Leadership Ministries for the Diocese of Georgia, to lead a session at the church to create long-term goals. Now the parish uses these goals to guide their annual meetings and vestry meetings to ensure that their conversation stays focused. Hobgood also helped them create a vision statement for the church, “To bring God’s children into communion with Christ.”
Crumpton notes, “It’s a work in progress. I don’t want anyone to think we have gobs of people attending church just because we’ve identified these communities and created a vision statement. Yet, we are strategically thinking about how to engage these people because we feel like they are already a part of our family. For instance, we had a low country boil last week (pictured above) and we intentionally invited all of our scouts and had a great turn out! The point is, even if these people are only coming to our facility for the day school or scouts, they’re still coming.Growth and depth is a better way to describe our change. We have seen an increase in numbers, but we’ve also seen more depth as far as commitment of parishioners-People feel like they’re in a family when they come here.”
About CDI
The Church Development Institute is one element of the leadership training brought to the Diocese of Georgia through the Campaign for Congregational Development. CDI’s aim is to equip leaders to facilitate a process of transformation, and to build up the capacities and skills of leaders through self awareness of one’s personal impact on others and the organization. CDI provides an increased knowledge of theories, methods and processes as a way to assess and understand the behavior and development of the congregation; and to give a safe learning environment where one can practice skills in facilitation, feedback, listening and presenting.
To find out more online visit: campaign.georgiaepiscopal.org or email the Rev. Walter Hobgood at wphobg@gmail.com
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