TABLE DISCUSSION RESULTS

Summary of April 10 table discussions.

The topic was “ What are the opportunities for growth and improvement in Ministry at St. Paul’s Cathedral at this time. (What can we do better).”

Group 1
Hold Taize services?
Hold services on another day or night.
Is Evensong a possibility?
Let’s celebrate our resources: children, youth, families, and seniors.
Let’s focus on people rather than “stuff”.
How can we attract more people?
How can we prevent burnout of our leaders?

Group 2
The church must appeal to youth, so we will have to make major changes. In 20 years, youth will not be attending as adults. Be more flexible in what we are, and be willing to accept change. Liturgy has less appeal to young people. Use modern technology – Facebook?
Be more involved with Outreach programs in the Community.
Be more involved with other Anglican churches in our area.
Put up or shut up. We need to move forward with our building.
Aging demographics.
Music leaves a lot to be desired. It is not uplifting.

Group 3
Do we need a formal way of recognizing new people and making them feel welcome?
Name tags would help those of us who forget names.
Do we give lots of praise to those who do ministry quietly or where we don’t see it?
Encouraging personal discussions of how our faith affects our life and our life affects our faith.
More contemporizing of liturgy and music, ie the written creeds.
Something to attract younger families. We could ask them what they need.
Hold a Sunday morning open house at St. Paul’s and get it out via the media.
Articles on various activities and ministries.


Group 4
More flowers.
More variety and choice in music – use new resources (Sorrento music, faster tempo, Voices United, John Bell, Taize)
More musical instruments.
There should be no age restrictions for joining the choir.
Handicapped access,
Make bulletin more colorful.
Hall access for the Youth Group, as more youth are attending.
Paint the outside of the church.
Have a suggestion box.
Braving into the community.
Young families.
Can be intimidating outside of the service.
More potluck dinners.
Frontier Fair.
Youth services, with youth music.
Team building activities with the whole church (icebreakers).
Asking opinions.

Group 5
Hearing in the Cathedral is difficult for some people. We need a wired sound system that would allow people to use headphones.
Tape sermons so that others may hear them.
Worship space needs to be consistent.
At worship, most of us are the same age. What is our future?
Change the music. Cursillo music would be better. We need music that makes us feel better and more uplifted. There is lovely music available. The words of many of the traditional hymns are not great and do not make much sense today.
Use more contemporary music.
Passing of the Peace at 10 AM sometimes becomes a bit of a zoo.

Group 6
Have a welcome package for visitors. Recognize visitors. Give them a personal invitation and take them to coffee.
Combine ministry displays with various functions to which community is invited.
Invite your friends and neighbors to church.
Increase amount of contemporary music. Ask young people to bring instruments to play.
Use music that we can sing – not pitched as high. Put music on a screen.
Try other ways of reconfiguration – eg in the round.
Make more use of Lay Ministers of Word and Sacrament. There could be a rotating preaching schedule.
Advertise what we do - eg Confirmation and Baptismal classes.
Invite those outside our church community to our parish events and activities, such as bible study, movies, community gardens, youth group. Make personal invitations, big color advertisments.
Vacation bible school in the summer.
We have an opportunity to increase our ministry at seniors’ residences – eg healing services.
We don’t know who in the community needs prayers, because at the prayers of the people the names in the basket are not shared.
Hold healing services at St. Paul’s.