Churches considering RenewalWorks often wonder how the initiative gets integrated into the larger church community upon completion of the formal process. This week we again consider this question with comments from Larry Haas, Senior Warden at Christ Episcopal Church in Glendale OH. Larry reflects on how his church views RenewalWorks as a beginning. Christ Church participated in RenewalWorks in May 2025.

Christ Church Glendale recently participated in the Renewal Works spiritual inventory process.  We heard about it from the Rev. Scott Gunn, Executive Director of Forward Movement and a priest at our church.  I was surprised and very pleased that it was not what I was expecting.

I am Larry Haas, Sr. Warden, and when I heard about Renewal Works, I was immediately thinking about the data.  An inventory of data – oh my, spreadsheets and graphs and unlimited cross-sections of data!  That certainly appealed to me since my career was in high performance computing.  But another part of me is deeply interested in spirituality.  I have been a lifelong student of Christianity and am continually learning how to engage my faith life with everything else in my life.  This was the big surprise of Renewal Works.  The data was subordinate to the conversation about spiritual growth.  Each of the four workshops touched on the data, but only to provide context for where we were, both individually and as a faith community on the spiritual growth continuum.  And furthermore, it wasn’t so much about new programs and devices to grow but rather conversation about how to become what we say we believe.

I think it is fair to say that it is challenging for most churches to embark in a new direction without a solid plan in place and a final product to coalesce the parish around.  But that is the beauty and challenge of Renewal Works.  It isn’t about a product at the end; rather it is about reviving a culture within our parish that permits spirituality to permeate everything we do.  Done well, it infuses the existing programs and gatherings with the one thing that separates faith-based organizations from other non-profit organizations; the opportunity to connect what we do with how it shapes our faith in God and our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.  Now that is not new or revolutionary but how many times do we come together and “do the thing” without a moment of conscious acknowledgement of God and what he is doing or has done?  Just taking a moment to ask the questions, “where did you see God in this ministry or the program or this project?”  Or a moment at the beginning of a meeting or gathering to set it up with a verse of scripture and a prayer to help us remember why we are “doing the thing”.

Here is an example to further illustrate the desire to finish a project and check the box – complete.  At the end of our workshops, we developed a report to the Vestry about this process and our recommendations.  Near the end of the report, we had a series of thoughts about how we could begin to insert some of these learnings into the everyday activities at our parish.  Since it was the end of the document, it felt unfinished, and we wondered if we should leave that section out.  I think that is a poignant result of our experience.  It isn’t a survey followed by four workshops and culminating in a report to the Vestry.  Rather it is a beginning; to recognize how we can challenge ourselves and each other to be cognizant of God’s work among us and how to become better followers of Jesus.  We intentionally left that section in the report and told the Vestry the work is unfinished.

Our Vestry has embraced this experience, and our Stewardship Commission used some of the new language of spiritual growth in their appeal for our annual canvas.  Our next step is to offer a workshop to small gatherings of our parish.  We are hopeful that there will be enough of our experience embedded in these gatherings to capture the imagination of our members so that we can embrace our spiritual journey together, intentionally, even as we are “doing the thing”.