Our Plans

Our Annual Plan

Our plans are derived from an extensive, churchwide, strategic planning process that led to the development of the Cedar Ridge Strategic Plan (also available as a Word document). This year’s plan (also available as a Word document) covers the period September 2023 – August 2024. Our goal for this year is to share our vision and welcome more people into our community. We will aim to achieve this goal by (i) increasing our reach into the community so people are more aware of who we are; (ii) making Sunday gatherings more accessible to new people; and (iii) fostering greater diversity and inclusion within our church community.

Our vision at Cedar Ridge is all about hope and transformation. This is rooted in the incredible hope Jesus has demonstrated for humanity—Jesus believes in us! So our vision is a commitment to the conviction that anyone can change, no matter how difficult that might be, and no matter how dark and desperate the situations we find ourselves in. It’s also a commitment to making the world a better place. The world can seem full of pain, injustice, violence, and despair, but there’s also so much love, healing, reconciliation, and beauty. Our vision means we choose to celebrate that beauty and refuse to give up hope by doing all we can to bring love, justice, peace, and healing wherever we can.

Hope requires both courage and practical determination, and over the years we have worked together to make this hope a reality. It’s a journey that is often slow, and progress is sometimes hard to see, but this hope is incarnated all around us. It’s in our community farm that feeds local hungry families, and in our 63-acre property that we ensure safeguards our local wildlife and historic buildings. It’s in our work with local schools, our solar farm, our partnership with the people of Ipala in Guatemala, and our struggle for racial justice right here. It’s in our efforts to become a more just, inclusive, and equitable community ourselves. It’s in the open space we create whenever we gather so that it’s safe to bring questions, doubts, and fears, and be our authentic selves no matter what our faith journey. And most of all it’s in each one of us as we work at our own personal growth, take care of one another, and serve in the myriad of ways that make our community what it is.

This hope is good news, and we have something worth sharing! So this year the main focus of our plans is to share our vision with others. We want to become more accessible to people who are looking for this kind of hope, and get better at helping people integrate into our community. We want to reach out and let people know we are here, and look for creative ways to engage with them. We want to continue our journey towards greater diversity and inclusion based on the feedback from last year’s discernment process. A core part of our vision is to be a welcoming community of radical love and acceptance, and this too is a part of our growth journey together. So this year we will all work together to explore ways we can grow in this way, as we seek to be agents of hope in our homes, neighborhoods, and society at large.