Annual Report from CUCR's Lead Strategist

August, 2010

Dear Board Members and Friends,
2009 was a year of steady growth for the congregational coaching and leadership development ministry of The Center for Urban Congregational Renewal. Highlights of this year include:

• A second year of our two year initial covenant with The Institute for Clergy and Congregational Excellence to providing facilitation for twelve gifted pastors serving Hispanic ministries in Texas. The ICCE is now exploring with the CUCR a second two-year Holy Conversations facilitation with an expanded group of pastors serving existing and planting Hispanic congregations. This work involves 80% of my time availability to the work of the CUCR. Evaluations of this first covenant experience are very encouraging. We are helping make a difference on the front lines of leadership development for the great Hispanic mission which is upon us in North America.
   
• The CUCR provided leadership for several pastor retreats and seminars. These focused on themes deep within our core values, e.g. “The Pastor as Spiritual Shepherd of a Maverick Flock”, “Spiritual Disciplines for Pastoral Vitality”, “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks….How a Long-Existing Congregation Can Reach and Include New People”, “Developing New Cells in an Aging Body….Inclusive Discipleship for the Urban Congregation”.
   
• Eight urban Ft. Worth District (UMC) congregations in transitional settings covenanted with the CUCR to undertake a nine-month discernment using Gil Rendle and Alice Mann’s Holy Conversation. Initiated by our newest CUCR Board member, Dr. Bob Holloway, the Ft.. Worth District Superintendent, this conversation began in late 2009 with invitations for each of the congregations to spend five monthly plenary presentations with me and six-eight leaders from each church, gathered together. Themes included Leadership’s Spiritual Foundations, Identifying Kingdom Values for Our New Day, Vision Casting from Kingdom Values, and lots of praxis reporting from each church. Now I am working with Bob and each congregation to solidify each congregation’s action plan for implementation of Phase I of their new visions. This is exciting learning for me and, I pray, for all participants.
   
• The Greenhouse Initiative you authorized me to undertake as a CUCR research and development project is making slow but steady progress. This concept has to do, you likely recall, with providing specially designed, equipped, and staffed congregant houses, e.g. Greenhouses, for adults with special needs to live in homelike supportive environments. The first step…still to be taken with any real substance, is the development of a prototype. A community, its willing churches, and individual supporters and participants will form a design team. The CUCR will provide concept and development consultation. Hot leads at this point on sites are: Sulphur Springs, TX (my hometown) and Georgetown, TX.
   
• Two to three times most months, I receive e-questions or phone calls from urban congregational leaders (pastors, lay persons, DS’s, etc) who know of our work and have specific questions. Sometimes these are “one-shot conversations”. Often these involve several interactions.
   
• Our ongoing coaching relationship with Kansas City’s Grand Avenue Temple UMC continues. New conversation now includes Resurrection Downtown e.g. Res Downtown, the new satellite congregation of Kansas City The Church of the Resurrection. At the invitation of Bishop Schnase and Rev. Bob Pharr, Director of Congregational Development for the Missouri Annual Conference, the CUCR is now a formal participant in formal discernment process between these two congregations, COR, and the Missouri Annual Conference to determine specific Godly plans for expanding both congregations’ vital ministries (GAT with urban sojourners, aka homeless people) and Res Downtown with young urban professionals who are moving in droves into downtown KC, MO.
   

I hope you agree with me that we are providing a helpful and fruitful service to congregations seeking new paths. Best of all, God is with us!

Respectfully submitted,

Dan Bonner
President and Lead Strategist