Shared Visioning Campaign
For the past few months, Rabbi Nemitoff has been working with volunteers on a project that we’re calling, “Shared Visioning.” This initiative was implemented successfully in Rabbi Nemitoff’s former congregation when it was going through some difficult transitions…not unlike TBT right now. At its core, Shared Visioning is about bringing us together to imagine the possibilities for the future of this congregation.
Curious where we're at in this project? See more below....
An Important TBT Survey: Help Us Create Our Shared Vision!
Shared Vision is about understanding who we are, what are our strengths, and how we can aspire to be even better. It happens only when each of us contributes our own vision, our unique perspective.
Our process to acquire this information takes three approaches: individual conversations, small group conversations, and congregational-wide input. We have met with congregants and learned about their Jewish journeys. We are in the process of meeting with a number of identified small groups. And now, we turn to you for broader input.
There are 18 questions. It will take about 15-20 minutes to answer all the questions. It is completely confidential. There is no way by which to identify any individual answer. We hope you will take a few moments, consider the questions asked, and offer us your most honest and heart-felt responses.
Our commitment to you is two-fold:
- We will share the responses we receive with you. No, not each individual response. But, we will tell you exactly what your responses have told us, what the patterns/similarities are, what our “shared vision” looks like.
- We will use this information as we go about the process of imagining what TBT will look like – programs, services, staffing – for next year and the next and the next.
To get a full picture of what our shared vision is, it is vital that each person in your household over the age of 18 individually respond. We know this can be a busy time of the year. But please complete the survey before December 31.
You can access the survey using this link: http://tinyurl.com/sharedvisionsurve
Hear About Shared Visioning from Donna Blankinship
Dear TBT Family,
Your temple leaders are planning for our congregation’s future, and we need your help. A few weeks ago, interim Senior Rabbi Art Nemitoff spoke about shared visioning. If you’d like to hear his remarks, you can watch a recording of the Friday service below.
Would you please consider being part of our future visioning project?
Temple B’nai Torah has been a Reform congregation for just over 50 years, and we’ve been in Bellevue for 25. It’s time to do some thinking about our future. In May, the community voted to take the next steps toward building an Early Childhood Center. What else do we want to do to keep TBT the temple we want and need – for us, our families, and our community?
This summer and early fall, a group of members will be reaching out to TBT members to ask them to sit down for a 30- to 60-minute chat to talk about your hopes for TBT, to learn more about what brought you to our community and what has kept you here. What are your priorities for your spiritual and communal life? We also will bring together some small groups to talk about TBT and eventually will send out a written survey.
Shared visioning is much more than a listening campaign. We will be listening, but our goal is to gather and express our communal beliefs about who we are, what is important to us, and where we want to go from here. We’ll use this information to decide what programming, services, staffing, and rabbinic leadership are right for TBT.
We’re not going to ask if you prefer potlucks over catered dinners or if the sanctuary is too cold, or what you think of the instructional signs near the recycling and compost bins. We want to go a bit deeper and so we’re starting with intimate conversations.
All the information will be compiled into one anonymous summary document to be shared with the congregation. We will tell you what we learned and ask for your feedback again to make sure we have reached a shared understanding. Then the temple board can make their decisions about our future based on your communal priorities.
This is important: Everything you say will be entirely confidential. Only the interviewers will know what any individual says; they will share their “data” in a way that does not reveal who said what. The people called for these initial interviews are being selected at random in a way that also reflects the breadth of our community by age, gender, background, and a few other aspects, like marital status, how long you’ve been a TBT member, whether you’re a parent, etc.
We know some people will REALLY want to be involved in this process, and others will be less enthusiastic. If you do not get a call and would like to participate, please email me, and I will add you to the list. If you do get a call, please try your best to participate. We’ll meet you where you are: in person (preferably) or on Zoom. The person you talk to will not be your best friend and could be someone you’ve never met. This is by design. But we hope the process will not only help us gather information but also build some new connections.
If you have questions, please email me. If you think you would like to help in another way, let me know that as well. More volunteers are needed for different parts of the process.
We want to hear from as many of you as possible because your voices together make up Temple B’nai Torah. Thank you for being a member of our community and for being willing to share your thoughts and dreams.
Sincerely,
Donna Blankinship
Watch Below for More Information
View a quick introductory message from Rabbi Nemitoff
Watch Rabbi Nemitoff's sermon about Shared Visioning
