In May 2009, The Vestry, staff, and other members of the parish of St. Stephens met for an intensive week of listening, sharing and discussion as we envisioned our dreams of the future at St. Stephen’s. Over 30 members representing all three worship services, and members from all groups active in the life of the parish participated in the process under the excellent leadership of The Rev. Canon Timothy Dombek. Canon Dombek serves as the Canon to the Ordinary (Assistant to the Bishop) of the Diocese of Arizona. He is a resource person to all parishes and groups in the Diocese, and assists parishes in many areas including Strategic Planning and Stewardship. Janet Kaiser serves as chairperson of the Vestry Visioning and Planning Committee. We would like to share with you our Planning and Visioning Workshop journey.

Canon through two exercises - Discovering our Core Values and Sharing Three Wishes - to assist us in developing a Focus Question that would guide us through our Visioning Journey. After discussion and sharing the Focus Question became:

 Using a tool called The ToP^® Participatory Strategic Planning Process Canon Dombek led us through a developmental process beginning with the Focus Question. We worked to answer that question from 4 different perspectives:

• Practical Vision (What do we want to see in place in 3-5 years time as a result of our efforts?)

• Underlying Contradictions (What is blocking us from moving toward our vision?)

• Strategic Directions (What innovative, creative, substantial actions can we take to deal with our underlying contradictions and move us towards our vision?)

• Focused Implementation (What will we actually do in the next year? In the next 90 days?)

The process helped us to define four (4) Strategic Direction areas: