Projects

A project related to the annual theme provides a focus for each congregation’s participation. Projects should build on the congregation’s strengths in worship, music, and the arts; expand its capacity to serve its surrounding community; and nurture ecumenical partnerships.

The project proposal is a very important element in the selection process. Successful proposals will be tied to the theme in ways that are clearly linked to the congregation’s own character, setting, and mission. They will be creative, well-designed, missional, and centered in the basic matters at the heart of the congregation's worship. Projects need not be new endeavors, but may be work in which the congregation is already engaged.

We urge congregations to be creative in considering what would be most generative for them and the others with whom their project would be shared.  Examples of last year’s projects, based on the theme “Worshiping God in this Place,” can be viewed here.  [link to Meet the 2011 Congregations]  In discerning projects relating to this year’s theme, “Keeping Time/Life Passages,” congregations might consider questions such as these:

• How does your congregation mark the rhythms of time in worship?  In what unique ways do ritual, song and image mark the various feasts and seasons, either sacred or secular, in your parish’s life?
• How does your congregation mark the rhythms of time in worship?  In what unique ways do ritual, song and image mark the various feasts and seasons, either sacred or secular, in your parish’s life?
• How does your congregation mark and commemorate the stages of life of its individual members (baptism, marriage, burial etc.)? How do such rites of passage shape your communal life of prayer?
• How is the new member or new Christian welcomed into the time-honored ways Christian communities have marked the passing of the days?
• Significant events happen over the course of time (i.e. changing demographics in the neighborhood, the merging together of two congregations).  If  your church has experienced a profound change at some point in its history, consider how worship, music, and the arts have reflected that change or helped you to deal with it?  How might worship, music, and the arts help you to negotiate changes that you anticipate will come in the next few years?
• How does music, prayer or visual art aid in connecting your worshipers with the eternal? How does your congregation help worshipers to engage the eschatological dimensions of music, worship, and the arts?