The people who formulated Washington National Cathedral’s new strategic plan, its dean says, had to wear at least three different hats; one to inspire vision, one to prompt attention to practicality and one to help recall the bottom line.
The process that resulted in the 2012-2014 Strategic Plan was, in part, about becoming very clear about “precisely the work that we think is financially feasible and fundable in our ministry,” the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd told Episcopal News Service in an interview this week.
The plan is meant to describe “as succinctly and clearly as possible what we think we’re doing for the country and for the Episcopal Church,” Lloyd said. It includes mission and vision statements, followed by four goals for living out that mission and vision.
The mission statement harkens to the cathedral founders’ intent that it be the spiritual home for the United States. The vision outlined says the cathedral ought to be a “catalyst for spiritual harmony in our nation, renewal in the churches, reconciliation among faiths, and compassion in our world.”
The four goals call for the cathedral to be:
– a sacred place, welcoming the country to pray, commemorate, celebrate, and mourn.
– an historic landmark and national treasure symbolizing the role of faith in America.
– a living, Christian community in the Episcopal tradition welcoming people of all faiths.
– a leader in convening people of all faiths to examine and respond to important issues in the world.
The 44-page plan, which is being printed and readied for distribution, explains the mission, vision and goals in detail, and is based on interviews, workshops, analysis, and review. It is, the dean said, “the culmination of several years of thinking hard about our strategic future.”
It also represents a shift in focus and emphasis at the cathedral. For the first nearly 90 years of its life, the cathedral’s plans centered around actually completing the building that would fulfill the three purposes of its founders: serving as a church to the United States, a house of prayer for all and the seat of the Diocese of Washington. The cathedral has “always been alive with a sense of having a national role, but its energy had to be spent primarily with the massive work of building this grand cathedral,” Lloyd said.
After the building was deemed complete in October 1990, there were what the new plan calls a “number of efforts” to describe more effectively the cathedral’s mission or to strategically reassess and articulate that mission and ministry. One such effort in 2006 took center stage during the cathedral’s 2007-2008 centennial celebrations, the new plan says, “but, as these recommendations were being implemented, the Great Recession rolled through the cathedral’s financial infrastructure like a rogue wave, and significant time and energy were spent righting the ship.”
Some cathedral staff members lost their jobs, beginning with the 30 staff positions that were cut in mid-November 2008. The budget cuts highlighted what the plan calls “the perpetual lack of the fundamental resources necessary to sustain the cathedral’s life and ministry” that have led to periodic financial crises and “to constant calculating and penny-pinching simply to keep the essentials of [the cathedral’s] operation intact.”
However, Lloyd said, the cathedral’s finances are now solid. “We’re making our budgets – no deficits,” he said, noting that the cathedral raised more money in annual contributions during the last year than it had in years.
Still, he predicted that the cathedral’s coming years will see “significant fund-raising, significant revenue generation and a capital campaign as well.”
And the plan necessitates leaving behind some initiatives once considered part of the cathedral’s mission. For instance, Lloyd said, it became clear that the cathedral’s efforts in global development weren’t its “strongest capacity or calling.” However, “creat[ing] the events that bring people together and inspiration engaging with global issues is something that the cathedral is uniquely positioned to do.”
If the plan calls for the cathedral to take a more pro-active approach to what Francis Sayre, a previous dean, called its “monetary asphyxiation,” it also calls for it to take more consistent and thoughtful approach to how it serves as a spiritual home for the United States.
“The time when the country most knows that we are the nation’s church is when we bury a president or are part of inaugurating one or we are available for an event like 9/11,” Lloyd explained, calling this as the cathedral’s “ministry of being available and ready to respond when those events come.”
Now the cathedral wants “to serve that role in a more regular and consistent way,” suggesting that it ought to, for instance, offer interfaith prayer services on annual civic holidays.
As to the plan’s goal of having the cathedral continue and strengthen its ability to convene interfaith discussions on the issues of the day, Lloyd said there is no place in the U.S. capital that is dedicated to the spiritual life of America or the story of faith in America, or that can be the place where people meet to discuss the role of faith in national and international affairs. Yet, he concedes, there is a lot of talk in Washington, D.C. about religion and politics.
“It’s one of the hottest topics going and there is a lot written and there is a great deal said on the airwaves and what we’re trying to do is draw that into public and civil conversation in a setting that invites the most thoughtful and reflective responses,” he said. “There are scholars writing how about it, there are politicians finessing their way around it, but what we’re trying to do is to create a context where those conversations can happen in ways that contribute positively to what people are thinking.”
Lloyd noted that the National Cathedral is on its own in this work. Despite its name and despite its membership in the Episcopal Church, it gets no funding from either the government or the denomination.
Still, he said, “it’s an Episcopal ministry of serving the nation and the world from the heart of the nation’s capital.”