Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- emerson:stone-soup [2025/04/12 15:52] – move organ tour to its own page naptastic
+++ emerson:stone-soup [2025/04/19 03:23] (current) – [Ministries] naptastic
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ====State of This Page====
 Stone Soup is a plan (in progress) to address Emerson's identified long-term planning needs regarding growth.
-[[emerson:stone-soup:introduction|Introduction]]
 The rest of the page should be links to other pages. Each of those will be one of three things:
@@ Line 8: / Line 6: @@
   * Policy recommendations, which go to the board
   * Discussion items (which probably means "I don't know specifically what to do here")
+"Each of those pages needs to" isn't written yet.
 The page should conclude with a very brief summary of the big asks.
 ====Points Currently Lost====
   * Probably the most important discussion item is **we need boundaries around church resources**.
@@ Line 17: / Line 18: @@
   * A timeline, or an order of operations, remains unaddressed as a problem. Some items have explicit interdependencies listed but it needs to be more fleshed out. These initiatives support each other and that is getting lost.
   * Emerson needs some work before it's ready to evangelize about itself
-  * If we don't have a worship calendar that commits us to specific services for each of the faith traditions we're supposed to represent, we should make one
+  * We don't do post-mortems and we need to start doing them for most everything
+  * If we don't have a worship calendar that commits us to specific services for each of the faith traditions we're supposed to represent, we should make one.
+  * Rather than trying to **grow** the worship **committee**, **build** a worship **ministry**.
+    * Growing the committee a person at a time is likely to continue failing. We need to train a batch of people on our workflow and get good at it together, so we've got people in all parts of the church who can get a service across the finish line.
+    * The word "committee" has a connotation. "Ministry" reminds us that worship is a core mission of the church.
+    * The word "team" also gets used in places; I'd rather use "team" to describe a group responsible for a given service.
   * We need to grapple with the bougie, the out-of-touch, the icky...
+----
+=====The In Order Part=====
+  * [[emerson:stone-soup:introduction|Introduction]] leads into
+  * housing first program
+  * leads to aid program connections
+  * connects to [[emerson:stone-soup:social-action-surveys|Social Action Surveys]]
+  * results in social action policy document platform thing
+  * causes shift in how worship programming gets selected: [[emerson:stone-soup:social-action-sundays|Social Action Sundays]]
+  * Worship Ministry Rebuild and workflow review (aka Digital Infra Overhaul Part 1)
+  * opens the door for the [[emerson:stone-soup:musical-collaborations|Musical Collaborations]]
+  * ditto for [[emerson:stone-soup:sunday-morning-jams|Jam Sessions]]
+If this is done as a presentation, this is where the first break goes. At this point, the structure of the plan should make sense.
+  * an essential part of this plan is [[emerson:stone-soup:feed-the-hobo|feeding me]]
+...there's still plenty that doesn't fit in the straight line.
 =====Ministries=====
@@ Line 27: / Line 51: @@
 We need to elevate the quality of our worship programming. The music is great but the music program has some constraints we need to lift, and the rest of the programming... we'll talk about it. But basically, we need more barn-burners. Sunday services have to be good or a church will fail no matter what else it's doing.
-We need a full-time music director. We also need at least four part-time musicians. (That includes Ariel.) Where possible, we should try to hire instrumentalists who can also be section leaders. Emerson is **heavy** into instrumental music; we need to leverage that.
+Julia needs to be full-time. We also need at least four part-time musicians. (That includes Ariel.) Where possible, we should try to hire instrumentalists who can also be section leaders. Emerson is **heavy** into instrumental music; we need to leverage that.
 Proposal: **We need to pay our music director enough that this can be her only job.**
-Proposal: As we hire musicians, we need to hire instrumentalists who sing, not just singers.
+Discussion: As we hire musicians, we need to hire instrumentalists who sing, not just singers.
 [[emerson:stone-soup:organ-tour|Sunday School Organ Tour]]
-[[emerson:stone-soup:arts|Arts Programs]] (need to split this)
 [[emerson:stone-soup:video-production|Video Production]] - Still trying to find more diplomatic ways to channel our drive to perform into something that's actually good for something
-[[emerson:stone-soup:musical-collaborations|Musical Collaborations]]
+[[emerson:stone-soup:ai-content-policy|No AI Content Policy]]
-[[emerson:stone-soup:sunday-morning-jams|Sunday Morning Jams]]
-Proposal: No AI Content Policy
-Because of the way AI models got created, there is no way to use them to create art that is not copyright-encumbered. Policies and laws are likely to be in a state of flux for a long time while we recalibrate to our new reality, but at the end of the day, there is no counterargument to "AI models are built on theft". If we use AI tools to create content, we are participating in that theft.
-I don't feel passionately about this. I don't hate AI. If anything, I'm disappointed in myself for not seeing through the hype sooner. I hit this point hard because it's a moral landmine that's really easy to not step on, and for practical reasons, it would really help me out if we could just never step on it.
 [[emerson:stone-soup:facilities|Facilities Makeover]] (need to split this)
-Policy recommendation: meeting spaces should not be used for long-term storage. Storage space is a resource around which we need to set boundaries. It's great that Emerson Players is self-funded, but how much storage unit space did you not have to pay for because we subsidized it by misusing our buildings? (Ok that sounds resentful, sorry)
+[[emerson:stone-soup:acoustics|Acoustic Treatment]]
 [[emerson:stone-soup:control-room|Control Room]] - Convert one the offices upstairs in Westwood hall into an A/V booth.
@@ Line 60: / Line 74: @@
 =====Activism=====
-[[emerson:stone-soup:social-action-surveys|Social Action Surveys]]
-[[emerson:stone-soup:social-action-sundays|Social Action Sundays]] (Not what it sounds like, but if you're imagining what I'm imagining... not the worst idea ever.)
 [[emerson:stone-soup:climate-game|Biggest Loser: Odometer Edition]]
 ===Direct Aid===
-[[emerson:stone-soup:aid|Emerson and Aid]]
+[[emerson:stone-soup:aid|Emerson and Aid]] (need to split this)
 =====Evangelism=====
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 There's this training and effectiveness program called Landmark, and I'd like to have a couple of people from Emerson go through it. No more than three; it's potent stuff. It would be easy to start a cult by accident. Been there, done that.
-===Social Media===
+[[emerson:stone-soup:social-media|Social Media Tactics]] - this is not a complete strategy and I don't want to be in charge of our strategy. I just have some ideas that might be really easy on a collective basis.
-Social media strategy is all about **engagement**.
-==YouTube==
-We need people to engage on YouTube. The Algorithm likes engagement. We should ask our audience to comment with timestamps to bits they found meaningful. (We should also capture those comments with other feedback on the service.)
-Some sermon segments might make good short-form content. We should do that.
-==Discord==
-We need an official Emerson Discord server. For those of us who use it, it's just too damn convenient. Nothing else comes close in terms of usability and utility. But for right now, it should probably be invite-only, because configuring a Discord server can get really complicated, and moderating an unruly server can become a big time sink.
-I'm willing to set one up and do very basic administration as long as the moderation requirements stay very small.
-If there's another church in the Houston UU Churches Network that uses Discord heavily, whoever runs their server might be willing to run one for us as well, or at least let us copy their configuration.
 =====What I am asking (and not asking) of YOU=====
-====What I Need====
-I'm just putting this up top so it doesn't get lost.
-This is a lot of plates to spin. There are some large parts that I simply have to do myself. I can't do it from Cypress.
-I need a place of my own that is close enough to church I can get myself back and forth, preferably via a single bus ride on a high-frequency route. I need enough room that I don't have to have a storage unit anymore. I need enough room to set up two desks, one for audio work.
-I need enough money that I can pay my bills, buy groceries, pay for medications. I'm not that expensive to keep around.
-How it gets structured matters. I have serious trust issues right now. Something needs to be in place that says the church can't change its mind and abandon me.
 [[emerson:stone-soup:block-schedule|Sunday Block Schedule]]