Imagine Incarnation
Reimagining Our Campus to Serve God's Mission in the Years Ahead
Back in 2020 our vestry established a task force to help generate ideas for the future of Incarnation's campus. Now that task force is inviting our congregation into a broad conversation about how our buildings and grounds can best serve God's mission in the years ahead. We're calling that conversation Imagine Incarnation.
Imagine Incarnation: Phase 2 (Fall 2023-Spring 2024)
Imagine Incarnation Task Force Update, August 2023
In spring 2023, following the completion of our Congregational Conversations in fall 2022, the Task Force set out to select an experienced team of campus planners and landscape architects to collaborate with the congregation, bringing life to the ideas generated by the Congregational Conversations process. This second phase of work will create a Generational Campus Plan for Incarnation. We use the term “generational” intentionally, because we seek to create a vision that will evolve and endure over future generations, while also serving members of all ages in our congregation. In keeping with this focus, the Task Force has now been renamed “Generational Planning Task Force.” A four-month evaluation of nationally renowned teams led to the selection of Siegel & Strain and EinwellerKuehl. Their unanimous selection by the Task Force was based on their demonstrated experience with faith-based campus plans, a commitment to an open and inclusive planning process, and unmatched expertise in historic preservation, landscape architecture, sustainability and contextual architectural design.
Phase 2 began with two congregational workshops in fall 2023 and will continue with two more in spring 2024. These are hands-on events using small group discussions, tabletop exercises, and opportunities to discuss and evaluate future possible outcomes, help prioritize these potential outcomes, and review next steps. We need as many members of our congregation as possible to participate. We believe we hear God's voice best in community. The Holy Spirit works through our collective discernment. Please mark these dates and plan to be part of these exciting and important events!
Sunday, October 1, 2023, 12:00-2:00 p.m.: Workshop 1: Refining Our Wants and Needs (complete)
Saturday, November 18, 2023, 9:00 am-12:00 pm: Workshop 2: Exploring Alternative Futures (complete)
At this three-hour workshop, our Planning Team returned to discuss alternative Futures for our campus. We heard from our team about the results they collected from our September workshop, including "do's and dont's" for the future of our buildings and grounds, plus overlay maps of where various different table groups located different activities. We also heard about the city of Santa Rosa's Downtown Specific Plan, how our downtown neighborhood is likely to change in the future, and how it relates to us. We discussed three particular "new uses" we might consider building on parts of our campus, including new meeting spaces, child care/preschool, and affordable housing. And we did more table exercises to further develop our imagination for what a future Incarnation campus might look like.
At this workshop we reviewed what we've learned so far, including the results from congregational surveys in November and January, plus the research our team has done into the feasibility of potential "new uses" such as new meeting rooms, child care, and affordable housing. The congregational survey results are available here:
Summary of the Paper and Online Surveys Online Survey Complete Report
Based on these learnings, plus the campus designs submitted by groups and individuals so far, our architect team shared a developing vision for a multi-phase generational plan and invited our feedback.
Sunday, April 21, 2024, 12:00-2:00 p.m.: Workshop 4: Our Generational Plan
At this final workshop, our design team will present the Generational Plan that they and we have crafted together and that will guide our vestry's decision-making about our buildings and grounds for years and decades to come. We'll also talk about "first steps" in this phased approach and what achievable goals we as a congregation will want to start with, which might include renovations of Farlander Hall, green and accessibility-related improvements to our church building, and the transformation of Jerusalem Courtyard and the lawn behind it into a more functional and usable garden space. Come help us refine the vision as we seek to help our campus serve God's mission in the years to come!
Where We've Been
Imagine Incarnation: Phase 1 (Fall 2022).
The first phase of Imagine Incarnation consisted of three in-person Congregational Conversations plus an online survey in September and October 2022, facilitated by our consultants Sarah Lightfoot, Barrie McClune, and Jim Heid. Together we reflected on the 150-year history of our campus, our understanding of our mission, and our hopes and dreams for the future of our buildings and grounds. Facilitators at each table group recorded members' comments, and our trained "themers" worked to distill everyone's comments into the most prominent recurring themes, which were presented back to the full group for more discussion.
These three meetings helped us produce the following common themes to carry forward:
A full report on this Phase 1 process, with a complete list of all participants' comments, is downloadable below:
Imagine Incarnation Phase 1 Report
Imagine Incarnation: Frequently Asked Questions
These Frequently Asked Questions were created by the Generational Planning Task Force in 2022 as an introduction to Phase 1 of Imagine Incarnation. We've kept them available here because they offer helpful background to the overall process.
Q. What is Imagine Incarnation?
A. Imagine Incarnation is a congregation-driven conversation about the future of Incarnation's campus in whic…
Read More »Imagine Incarnation: Campus Tours
Our Property Development Task Force has been working hard to prepare these online tours of our beautiful campus. We hope you'll enjoy learning more about the history and current uses of our buildings and grounds.
A tip: #1 and #4 are the two videos that cover the most parts of our campus that many parishioners may not already be familiar with. But of course we hope you'll take the…
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