Meet the Phase II Task Force

The Phase II Task Force is a group called together to draft Principles for Worship, Ministry, and Service for Phase II.0 based on the distinctive identity of the St. James’ community, the guidelines from the bishop’s office and health and local authorities, and surveys and conversations with the congregation and staff.  In assembling this group, our desire was to draw together people representing the diversity of our community in a variety of ways and to pull together a team of adept connectors and listeners.

What is Phase II?
Phase II is a phase in our public life marked by the following health characteristics:

• There is a sustained reduction in local cases for at least 14 days;

• Local hospitals are safely able to treat all patients requiring hospitalization without resorting to crisis standards of care.

Ideally, greater availability of testing and systems for contact tracing and quarantine would be in place.

Who decides that we are in Phase II?  Our bishops in consultation with local and health authorities will make this call.

In Phase I, we have not had a lot of choices about how to be church community.  Many of those choices were essentially made for us.  However, we did make some conscious choices to live into our values in particular ways.  For example, in order to maintain the diversity of voices in our worship, we chose to record and edit worship videos to broaden ability for participation (instead of livestreaming).  We made difficult choices in adapting our models of service through Freedom Schools and Neighbor 2 Neighbor in order to continue to serve.

Phase II will be marked by more choice in how we gather.  We will continue to gather by using the technologies available to us, but we will also be allowed by local and diocesan authorities to begin to countenance gathering in person.  Phase II will be marked by choice, but also risk and uncertainty.  So, we are seeking to develop some principles for Phase II that will guide the choices that we make as a community driven by love to be together in some way and to choose ways of being together that express our care for the most vulnerable.

We are not expecting to enter Phase II very soon, given what we are hearing from local and health authorities.  So, we have a time to begin to imagine about what being St. James’ might look like before we enter into this new time.  The Spirit has been alive, bringing us together in new ways, reminding us of how we belong to each other, and revealing the ways we have neglected or forgotten that mutual belonging by leaving injustice and inequality unchallenged.  And so we invite that lively Spirit of reformation into our discernment as a community now to guide us in the way of love toward each other and into the very heart of God.

How can I be a part of this conversation?
Next week a survey (in English and in Spanish) will go out to the congregation.  Through this survey, we hope to get some information about how you are currently connecting and how you are thinking about your own plans in a Phase II world.  The survey will only take five minutes to fill out.

On Tuesday, May 12, Rev. Eileen will hold online/on call “office hours” from 1-4 pm to hear from you about your thoughts and questions about Phase II.  Email rector@stjamesaustin.org to schedule a 30-minute time slot.

We will also be calling our list of folks who don’t really interact with email or online media, as well as a sampling from the survey in order to get some more qualitative detail.

Weekly updates on this Task Force’s work will appear in the e-news.