Thursday, April 10, 2025
What is the future of our tiny home Sacred Settlement? Should we add more homes to the three residences we now have? How would that fit with our mission to build the church and love the world?
These are questions now being explored by a team set up by the Settlement Stewardship under authority delegated by the Congregation Council. The team has been meeting since March 8 and plans to present a report to the Council in May.
Here are some highlights of the team’s work so far:
- Any decision to expand our settlement will be made at a congregational meeting, perhaps as early as the June Semi-Annual meeting.
- If our congregation supports expanding our settlement, the most feasible plan would be to add three homes – two for individuals who have been chronically homeless and one for an individual or family to be intentional neighbors.
- Adding three homes appears to be feasible without major infrastructure improvements.
- Current spaces, showers and toilets meet regulations for added neighbors.
- Our planning work is broken down into several elements, including
- siting and installing the homes,
- identifying a new intentional neighbor (or couple/family)
- selecting and orienting invited neighbors,
- planning improvements of our common spaces, both outside and inside
- planning purposeful work opportunities
- assuring that we will have a good mix of supportive friends
- what are the costs and how we might fund them
This work began before Pastor Peter announced that he is leaving and will continue as planned after he departs.
There is however, quite a bit of overlap between planning for Settlement expansion and the work PoP needs to do during the transition to calling a new pastor.
Our group needs and wants to hear from you, but we don’t want to plan a formal process for getting your input until we know how that would overlap with getting your input into the transition process.
Stay tuned. In the meantime share your thoughts or questions with any of our team: Michael Stetzler, Rick Rothhausen, Cathy Canfield, Scott Vaillancourt, Steve Sveom and Fred Omigachi.