Long-range planning is a key part of the ministry of the Rev. James Dorn III, his staff and his flock, as St. Matthias grows along with the city of Clermont.

From the Long-Range Planning Committee

The LRPC promised to report on the survey, which you responded to so effectively. Your responses and comments gave us the voice we so wanted to hear. Our initial take-away is that the St. Matthias community is pretty comfortable with its current status. The survey showed that most of us are in favor of growing St. Matthias and making it a welcoming place for Episcopalians and anyone interested in joining a community where God is worshipped, the Bible is preached and taught, and where people genuinely care for each other. However, there are some long-term developments that we, the LRPC, see that catch our attention. We would like to share our assessment with you and some proposals for positioning ourselves to navigate the coming changes.

We believe we have four strategic issues to address:
1. Making St. Matthias attractive to new members
2. Maximizing member participation in St. Matthias
3. Optimizing use of current facilities
4. Improving the fiscal health of St. Matthias

We grouped our survey questions around these four areas. The chart shows the results. One area that stands out to us and highlights the need for an ongoing awareness and change effort will be the service schedule analysis. This area had the lowest level of agreement, but it is a key area of resource optimization and space management. There will be a lot of work and discussions in this area. We show you all of this to kick off our overall awareness and change management effort. I’ve got to tell you, we expect there are going to be several significant change areas. Based on the strategic issues we have highlighted there will be pain points we just can’t get around.

When we last spoke to you, as we got ready for the survey, we pointed out a few of the challenges we were aware of. One was making the best use of our facilities; a second was the need to bring new members into our congregation; another was the need for more revenue—continued deficits would only lead to a downward spiral in our ability to operate. Those conditions are still true, but another factor, the city of Clermont’s growth plans, has appeared on the horizon and promises to impact all of our other challenges. This new factor is really a good thing, but we must consider it in our plans, if we are to remain a viable congregation.

If you take a casual look around Clermont, you will see the city and the surrounding communities are booming. Clermont is undergoing significant growth (some would say “exploding”). The City Council recently approved a vision designed to manage that growth. The City Council wants to make the heart of Clermont an engine for growth, especially the downtown area. Plans are under development for increasing the number of people who live and work in the downtown area. They want to improve and increase the entertainment and recreational capacity of Clermont, which is strategically located at the exact mid-point of the Coast-to-Coast (C-to-C) trail that will connect Florida’s East and West coasts. St. Matthias itself is strategically located just about at the epicenter of Clermont’splans http://www.clermontfl.gov/core/fileparse.php/106648/urlt/Clermont-MasterPlan.pdf

Fr. James Dorn greets parishioners.

a) How do we plan to position St. Matthias to be able to accommodate new members?
b) How do we position ourselves to be able to grow (numerically and physically)
c) Will we need to acquire more property on our block to be able to grow? If so, how?
d) How do we generate the needed funds for current operations and position
ourselves to have the room to accept new members?

The LRPC suspects we have lost potential members to neighboring Lutheran and Methodist congregations, because our 10AM service was too crowded or overcrowded. We believe we need to study how best to design our Sunday service options to make each one equally appealing. In that way we would be better able to accommodate the current demand and posture us to grow within our current space, even as we plan to acquire the room to grow—we have a lot of options to consider. We all have a role to play. We ask you all to contribute, to come to this process with an open mind. Change is coming, whether we want it or not. We have an opportunity to shape the future of St. Matthias; please be ready to help when we call for your help.

There is more work here than the long range planning committee can take on. We are looking for volunteers (if we don’t get volunteers, we will have to draft you). We want to create a roster of potential members we can call on to assign to the subcommittees that will take on the development of possible courses of action for our Sunday services, for studying current space utilization, for considering options for positioning ourselves to make the most of Clermont’s growth, and for our fiscal planning.

Speaking of volunteers, another take-away from the survey was, we must make being a St. Matthias volunteer a rewarding and gratifying activity, that is, if we want to increase audience participation. Our real work has begun.