We need to only have programs on two or three issues at most, but we should have positions that we develop ourselves on all the issues we care about. (We should have “ministry” on everything, even if “ministry” consists of a paragraph of text in a thing we re-write every handful of years, until enough people organize a bigger ministry.)

The next time the Social Action Council does a survey, I want to structure it differently to accomplish a couple of goals:

1. Make sure we reach the whole congregation; if not every individual, then a representative sample
2. Solicit responses that can be woven together into combined position statements

If someone walks in the door wanting to act, but the specific issue they care about isn't one of the three we've picked, I would like to be able to offer:

• The church has a position on the issue
• We have partnered with @{organizations} to work on it
• We do legislative action on it, and be prepared to expand on that
• If Emersonians are working on it independently of the church (e.g., the Afghan refugee thing)
• We've had a service about that recently / have a service about that coming up

This would become a living document–an artifact of our active faith.

This is the other side of the coin of being able to fill any need someone might walk in with.