Report on the Lay Visitation at St. Stephen's Anglican Church, Thunder Bay
The visitation was undertaken in the spring and fall 2000. The committee decided that the main purpose of the visitation was to build community. It was decided to not make finances a priority, however, the committee agreed to develop a pamphlet that was a narrative budget and would be left with each family. Secondary purposes were to convey information about the parish, update the information for each family, promote the web site, and create an opportunity for parishioners to comment on what they like about the parish and what they would like addressed. A questionnaire was developed for the visitors. At the end of the visitation there was a follow-up meeting where information was shared. Visitors were expected to maintain confidences and any comments were reported back anonymously, unless the parishioner gave permission to use her or her name. The feedback was generally that the visitors had a good time and overstayed their visits.
To oversee the visitation, the Parish Council struck a committee. It consisted of a chair, the Incumbent and 3 other people. The purpose of the committee was to:
develop the training for visitors; and
recruit visitors.
It was agreed to ask each visitor to make 5 visits. Visitors were assigned parishioners to visit at the visitor's training night. Each visitor was given 7 names, recognizing that not everyone would accept a visit. For parishioners that did not accept a visit, the visitor was asked to review the questions on the questionnaire over the telephone. Visitors were given a mixture of parishioners: some whom they knew from Sunday attendance at church but did not know well, and some whom they did not know.
A letter was sent out to the parishioners announcing the visit and updates were put in the parish newsletter.
A pamphlet was written that had a simplified narrative budget in it.
A package for visitors was developed that included:
an information pamphlet for people new to the parish;
A training meeting was held. The agenda was:
St. Stephen's Anglican Church Job Descriptions; and
a detailed narrative budget.
a discussion of the purpose of the visitation;
tips on visiting in homes;
a review of the visitor's package, questionnaire and narrative budget;
viewing of the parish's web site; and
selection of parishioners to visit and distribution of the information on those parishioners to the visitors.
We did not have enough visitors to visit the whole parish in one period, so a second phase was scheduled, spring and fall. The spring phase had the training meeting. Each phase began and ended with a meeting. At the meeting to begin the second phase, the print materials were updated to reflect decisions that had been made in the parish over the interim.