VISION 2025: OUR ONGOING HOPE
Imagining the future and mindful of the challenges of our times, Shalem is grateful to commence its next chapter embracing opportunities for renewed vision and vitality.
Our faithful work continues with eyes and hearts open to see the greater impact Shalem might have on our hurting world. Our grief and response to the pandemic, racial injustice, political unrest, and the climate crisis has drawn us again to the ancient longing for wholeness and oneness in the Spirit.
With a greater number of people participating in Shalem programs, a new awareness of necessary organizational changes has surfaced. To sense the movement of the Spirit, a Vision Coalition was created and invited to listen to our broad community. Deep prayer and active listening led to drafting a Vision Statement, Guiding Principles and Focus Areas to guide us as we respond to God’s lifegiving activity: this is Vision 2025.
As Vision 2025 propels us into this next chapter, we invite you to imagine the power and possibility of our collective contemplative discernment and compassion. We invite your bold prayers and courageous hope.
Mission Statement:
To nurture contemplative living and leadership
Vision Statement:
In 2025, Shalem will be a dynamic and inclusive community, empowered by the Spirit, where seekers engage in transformation of themselves, their communities, and the world through spiritual growth, deep connection, and courageous action.
Guiding Principles:
- Responding to Divine Initiative, we allow the Divine to lead us into shared practices of sacred stillness, deep listening, open-heartedness, and prayer.
- With Holy Awe, we will practice cultivating gratitude, curiosity, joy, and delight, celebrating the power of Love to transform.
- We acknowledge the uniqueness of each spiritual path and welcome the creative possibilities our gifts and experience bring to Shalem and the world.
- Grounded in the Christian contemplative tradition, we will celebrate the diversity of all contemplative traditions and lift up the voices beyond historically dominant ones.
- As beloved community, we will face our fears and act with compassion and courage to challenge injustice, dismantle systems of inequity, and pursue reconciliation.
- We affirm Sacred Abundance within and around us and will seek to act with generosity and trustworthiness as we steward our resources – human, natural and financial.
Focus Areas:
Contemplative Grounding
Contemplative grounding is our expression of the Great Love at the center of all things. As we continue to be drawn to the edge of God’s longing, we are invited to a fresh articulation of that expression. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
Belonging
Belonging is the manifestation of God’s union with all things. When we are radically inclusive, we embrace the Loving Essence of each individual. A sense of belonging for each of us follows as we are part of something larger than ourselves while honoring who we are and who we want to be. (John 17:21-23)
Capacity Building
Capacity building is not a one-time effort to improve short-term effectiveness; it is the intentional and continuous imagining of what is needed for Shalem to grow to the next level of operational, programmatic, financial, and organizational maturity so that we may more effectively and faithfully live our mission into the future. (Luke 14:28-30, Jeremiah 29:11-13)
Sustainability
Sustainability occurs when we attract and effectively use enough and the right kind of resources to achieve our long-term goals. Sustainability invites us to prayerfully consider the whys and ways we invite, receive, and utilize our resources. (1 Peter 4:10)
Generating
Generating is action fueled by courage, confidence, and hope. Embracing mystery, we seek to discover new ways of expressing the contemplative Christian tradition beyond the usual exchange of information. (Jeremiah 6:16)