Listening Campaign Update

Listening Campaign Update

It's time for a checkup on the listening campaign. It's been two years since we started the conversation, but considering that Covid-19 slowed us down a bit, we have made some great progress. After receiving over two hundred opinions from our congregants at over 20 small group meetings, we distilled our strategy into four categories: minyan, holidays, social, and young families.

We harnessed the enthusiasm of our chairs for each of these subcommittees; Nicole Saidman, Andy Siegel, and Sheila Adelman, and leveraged Rabbi Sam's minyan advisors as they read through all the notes from our conversations. We are now both creating the strategies and in parallel implementing many of the ideas we garnered from our family of congregants.

  • We will be enhancing our minyan with new spiritual discussions and thoughts of the day and involving our youth by teaching them to lead. We plan to increase the profile of our daily minyan which is unique in Atlanta and will also leverage technology to allow all to participate in whatever way they desire.
  • We are looking at our existing programs, such as the Eizenstat lecture, and ways to create additional social interactions to enhance both bonding and learning in smaller groups.
  • Our young family group may be our most enthusiastic with plans to involve our kids in our sanctuary services, enhance family Shabbat and create social events for grandparents, parents and grandchildren.  There has been a clear call to create events for "parents only" designed for those who need a little adult time with friends in our shul.

Our listening campaign meetings were so successful that many of our groups expressed a desire to meet again and we are looking into ways to facilitate get-togethers with those groups as well. Each step of the way, we have increased engagement and social interaction within our membership whether it be attending the small group meetings, serving on the committees themselves or participating in the planned events. If you have not had an opportunity to be a part of this process, we invite you to let us know.

Stay tuned for more to come…

Mark Stern
Listening Campaign Chair