A Strategic Plan for the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

Quick links: Resource Hub  –  One-page Strategic Plan description  –  Five-page Strategic Plan description
Linked below, find more resources for sharing the plan

Answering the question of why

Our primary goal is to embody the Good News in our individual lives and in our common life as a church that more of our neighbors come to find that same redeeming love we enjoy. Our Reformed Catholic approach to Word and Sacrament, in which we give thanks that we are seen right in God’s sight through faith alone and then, in gratitude, we nurture ourselves through practices of faith that assist us in becoming more Christ-like over time. This will not be for all of our neighbors, and so we enjoy working with our ecumenical partners. Yet, not a small number of our community will not be able to follow Christ in the way they feel compelled to do without the Episcopal Church in their area. 

Grounding our plan in scripture

The scriptural grounding for this “one another” theme is found throughout the New Testament in the 43 verses that describe how followers of Jesus are to treat others. The early Christians saw the fellowship they shared expressed best in the word koinonia—which means communion, sharing, participation, and partnership—as in Christ, they experienced a reality that is greater than each of us and our own individual needs through communion with Jesus. It is this hope for a greater sense of connection that came through the listening sessions in our strategic planning process. In 2025, our Diocesan Strategic Planning Committee developed this plan, incorporating feedback from the diocese. 

Encourage One Another

These are the new ways we are responding to the challenges of this moment when an ongoing decline in church attendance in general meets up with an even longer ongoing downturn in population in many of the rural communities we serve. The new approaches include the Lay Worship Leaders’ training that brought 47 people together from across the Diocese to develop skills in leading the principal service on a Sunday in the absence of a priest. This also includes a new Resource Hub to give leaders scattered across the broad Diocese equal access to good tools that will keep every congregation from “reinventing the wheel.” 

Strengthen One Another

This area of the plan is about shifting how we engage with some areas of ministry where we have long been active—like youth programs and college chaplaincies—so that we are better able to care for these essential ministries. This also includes the look underway now to tend to the sustainability of Honey Creek.

Love One Another

This love is what the plan aims us toward. Our new ways of being and the strengthening of long-standing commitments will assist us in engaging our communities in becoming the Beloved Community that reflects the very heart of the Holy Trinity. We enjoy the unearned grace of our loving and compassionate God who loves us as we are too much to leave us as we are and we know our family, co-workers, friends, and neighbors need this gracious love as much as we do.

How we arrived at the plan

In the listening process, our consultants began with 16 one-on-one interviews, held 10 in-person and online listening sessions with 215 participants, and conducted a survey to learn more; nearly 500 of you answered that call. Then we used the convention last year to hone our responses to what we heard. What came through clearly was a desire by many for more connections with one another and a need from most for greater support in some areas of our common witness to the love of God we have found in Jesus.

Not a static plan, but a dynamic direction

Bishop Logue and the Strategic Planning Committee have made it clear that this work provides us with a dynamic direction rather than a static plan. Even when we shared in convention the initial plans for how we will live into this call, we see how the Holy Spirit will further lead us as we continue in this direction aimed at greater faithfulness. In a few years, we will be able to name yet more ways in which this plan unfolded in ways that we can’t yet see.

The Diocesan Strategic Planning Committee

The Diocese is indebted to the considerable work of the committee: